Mayhem at Madras Cafe

The rawa (semolina) dosa was pretty good. It was light and crispy. The first time I had rawa dosas was at Bombay when my summer MBA project guide, Sanjiv, ordered it during my first visit to Bombay to present my paper. The sambhar at Madras Cafe was less sweet than what you get at Shiv Sagar, Bandra. The folks at Madras Cafe had obviously stayed true to their South Indian roots unlike the Shiv Sagars of the world who cater to the Gujaratis of Mumbai who are vegetarian, moneyed and prefer food which is on the sweeter side.

There was a Jain in the group who couldn’t have onions or any root vegetables due to religious restrictions. So our waiter got him a Mysore cheese dosa. It was really tasty and had a nice grainy touch to it. I kept eating from our Jain friend’s plate (a hearty eater who normally goes berserk about cheese garlic toast) though he couldn’t eat our stuff. His face fell with every bite I took. I guess I am still a bit of a food bully, 18 years after I used to leave young Gopa hungry.

There was a gender war going on during lunch as we guys would keep calling the food over to our table. The girls were sitting in a table beside us but they hardly got anything.

The gilrs ended up having largely idlis which, well, are boring. Plus the Madras Cafe folk dunk the idli in the sambar and get it while I like to have mine separate.

We ordered some ‘frozen payasam’ (kheer, rice pudding) for dessert. It was neither good nor bad. I like my kheers to have resins/ kishmish. The others went for ice cream after that. I headed back to work as I had a telecall to attend. But I did enjoy our afternoon boisterous break. Helped one destress from work. I needed that.

And the perfect way to end it was with the ‘filter kaapi’. A friend on Facebook keeps insisting that I don’t call it just ‘coffee’. This south Indian coffee was pretty nice and strong. You need to shunt it from the cup to the tumbler the cup is placed in till it cools down. Most of us tried doing so thanks to our dosa highs.