Our friends, Tanuja and Nishant (flanking Kainaz in the picture), introduced us to the food festivals at the Dadar Catering College (Institute of hotel management) in Bombay. We have been with them to the Japanese food festival there last year as well as to the Norwegian salmon one.
Come to think of it they are slightly funny folks to go to food festivals with. Tanuja is the Jughead of the group. You will hardly think that she is interested in food if you look at her. And yet she is the one who found out about the festivals. And she makes kick ass prawn curries. Nishant loves sweets but is a vegetarian. So what is he doing in festivals of flesh? Well, it seems that love triumphed. What we called ‘family of procreation’ in sociology has overcome the lessons of the ‘family of orientation’. Simply put he has nibbled on chicken and fish thanks to the charm of his fair lady. They also deserve a paragraph on the blog as they are a ‘blog couple’.
Now that I’ve finished with the society pages I guess I can write on the food.
I loved the prawn crepes and squids in miso course in the starters. The squids were presented whole and retained a slightly purple natural colour. This was different from India where squids are cut into rings and cooked in some fairly heavy masala. The potato and cheese pancakes and the potato fritter salads were nice. But who comes to a Japanese food festival to eat potaotoes?
The sushi platter was nice. It was quite fresh and tasty. I won’t pretend that sushi is my favourite dish in the world. But it’s nice to have it as a change. I like the crunch of raw fish in sticky rice.
I loved the tempura prawns in the main course. The batter was very light and the prawn was big, well flavoured and very juicy. There was a beef steak which had a heavenly mustard, wasabi, mayo dressing. The sauce was sharp and very saucy. Loved it with rice. There was chicken and fish too which were fine without being memorable.
I had a macha ice cream. It was a green tea flavoured sorbet which was ‘interesting’. It had a slightly tangy taste and was garnished with raw ginger. The ginger gave an intriguing warm aftertaste to the ice cream.
There was a tiramisu which was a hit at our table. I had to defend my macha ice cream in fact. There was a cheese cake which looked green and apparently tasted sad. I didn’t even bother.
A couple of us tried sake, the Japnese rice wine. It’s a white spirit which had shades of vodka and was on the sweeter side.
Notes:
– the food festival was a bit disorganized this time compared to our last couple of experiences there. The prawn platters would often remain empty. The complementary wine portion looked dwarflike
– the next food festival coming up there is an Italian one. We are not sure whether we will go though as Italian as not that new a cuisine
– Parking is quite easy here
– The festivals cost around Rs 1000 (25 USD) per head
