Fried. A day in the life of a reluctant food critic.

The fries saved me when I felt fried.

I felt that I should write about new places occasionally. People want to know about them. And I keep writing about the same old places. I don’t do hosted meals often. I don’t feel that they qualify as a review. That’s a personal choice.  I have tried out a few new places recently. I’ve written about the ones I liked. Skipped the others which were not up to the mark.

That’s not how it was 16 years ago. Finely Chopped was born to dissect all that was wrong in the world of food. FCis is no longer an angry young blog. I prefer to celebrate good food and the people behind it rather than focus on what is not. That’s why I call myself a food writer and not a food critic.

Yet, ‘which is the latest place you have been to? What’s new and good?’ are questions people ask me when we meet. I decided to step out yesterday and try something new and tell people about it. Hopefully, the place will be good. What followed was a comedy of calories, I mean, errors. I landed up at a tried-tested place to have a tried-and-tested dish

Saved by a salad

I decided to change that and try something new. I went to Freny’s yesterday. It is owned by chef Freny, who happens to be an East Indian. The extensive menu of the all-day restaurant features a few East Indian dishes. You hardly get East Indian food here even though they are among the original inhabitants of Mumbai, which is on the west coast of India. They are different from Bengalis, Odias, etc, who belong to the east of India.

Freny’s is close to home. It began to rain heavily. I walked down. I had an umbrella. My sneakers got wet. It was fun. Till I reached my destination and saw that the shutters were down. Freny’s was shut! I had made the mistake of not checking before I left.

I thought of trying out Santa Maria, the new sandwich place. This time, I checked on the internet first before going there. They were shut, too. A Monday thing, I guess. I thought I would check out Benne, the new dosa place which has created waves in Mumbai. Google Maps told me that they would open at 7 pm.

I decided to go to Mag St Restaurant and check out the lunch menu. K and I had gone for breakfast there when they had opened here. I had liked the chorizo benedict. The waffles had not impressed K, who is a waffle nazi. She said it was not sweetened enough.  How would lunch be? Google Maps got me lost. It was 3.20 pm. Lunch service might have shut by the time I reached.

What next? We had lunched at Vietnom, the new Vietnamese place and had been underwhelmed. Where else could I go?

I finally took an Uber to Poetry by Love & Cheesecake. K & I liked our recent breakfast there. I had the eggs Benedict. She had fried eggs, which she said were perfectly seasoned, which is rare in a restaurant. How would the mains be? I checked the menu. I found chicken breast appeared too often in the non-veg section. I rarely eat chicken in restaurants. And I had breast pieces.

I got up. Went to Noa next door. They were shut for maintenance!

The baconator. A SHD classic.

I was famished and fed up. I decided to walk home & call in for a burger from Smoke House Deli. Then it struck me that I could go to SHD itself and have the burger made fresh rather than have it cold at home. I was too exhausted and hungry to walk. I hailed a rick and reached SHD.

‘Greek salad and a baconator burger,’ I told Anand, who took the order. ‘Please get the salad quickly.’
The salad appeared in five minutes. I had never been so happy to see a salad before in my life. I polished off the salad leaves, olives and feta before you could say, ‘Moo.’

The burger appeared soon. I wolfed it down, too. It made me happy. The patty was juicier than the one in Table Colaba that I had last week. The French fries that came with them were perfect, as they always are here. They soothed my ruffled feelings

I didn’t feel fried anymore!

The phrase, ‘to whom it may concern,’ came to me while I wrote this story.
What I just wrote would not be of ‘concern’ to anyone, to be honest. It was not what one would expect to find on a website
But then, my blog was my diary. Why should the website be any different?

As the song goes, be yourself no matter what they say

PS: I have a section called ‘everyday stories’ on the site for these blog-like posts.

PPS: I will go back to Freny’s one day. Santa Maria, too. And will tell you about them.

PPPS: I used Zomato Gold as taught to us by our Genz friend and got a sizeable discount.