‘Do you know what this reminds me of? The alu cheese chilli toast sandwich that we would have at the sandwichwala downstairs before we went up to office.’K was talking of then time when we worked at FCB Ulka at Nariman Point and where we first met. We coordinated our arrivals at the Churchgate station back then and headed to work together from there. Sharing a cab rather than taking a share cab. Very Amul Palekar Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie-ish come to think of it now. Very sepia. A decade after their time. This was the early 2000s.
Today’s sandwich had no potatoes. It had finely chopped tomatoes and onions along with capsicum and cheese. A lot less butter than the street-side guys put. I used an avocado oil sprayed electric grill and not a butter greased handheld toaster. The green chutney was Bangal dhone paata bhorta made by our friend Shaswati and possibly had no grated coconut in it unlike in the Mumbai hara chutney. I had an espresso and not the milky coffee served in the average agency canteen. I did not open the ketchup bottle that we have just ordered in. Still, it is fair to say that nostalgia works much better as a sauce than reasoning. The Amul butter and cheese were constant. Though not Bimbo or Wibbs, the bread was the standard commercial white bread which works best for the Mumbai sandwich. I added some pink salt and black pepper too.
I had written about our post lockdown work from home breakfasts and you can read it in the blog:
