An Ode to an Old Friend.....

All this time, we had been writing about different places that we had visited, and breaking down food to the last fragment with our critique. For this one though, I was compelled to pay homage to an art form(I find calling it “cuisine” pretty insulting), that has satiated us over many year, with it being one of the very few styles that constantly has had something new to offer to us. Quite a few will beg to differ to the following statement but, its as Indian as it can be. I wish to honour the flamboyant and ever bold art of Indianised-Chinese food.
All of us have Fried rice and Manchurian(chicken/veg/paneer/gobi is up to you) a good deal of times in our yet small life. Many versions of these delicacies and more, have intrigued us and appalled us simultaneously. But there certainly is something about this mode of preparation that keeps us going back more and more. Some say its the MSGs, maybe that is the case, but I think ajinomoto just helps and that's it. My acquaintance with “punjabi-chinese” goes back many years. My earliest memories of watching a guy doing acrobatics with a wok whilst tossing and catching rice/noodles in it, as the shades of the contents of the wok kept changing from something subtle to something angry in a matter of seconds, surprised me which rather made me curious about glowing red rice(its a story, so it can glow), this dates perhaps of when I was a mere toddler. But ever since that first morsel of schezwan rice(not szechuan), the first bite of that Chicken Chilly and the sip of the Manchow soup, I haven't looked back.

Constantly on the prowl for anything new these guys who we all are certain have not been in any tangible proximity of china, have to dish out, I have come across a wide hilarious, obnoxious and amazing variety of things in this so called exploration. Almost every six months there is something new on the menu of these places, with references to places to which the dishes might belong to, like KOREN CHICKEN, MALESIAN CHICKEN, SINGAPUR CHICKEN. Mind you the mistakes in the names are deliberate to emphasise on the fact that the names do not matter, they are there just to provide entertainment, unintentional though. Even though the tentative certainty says that the guy making is not even remotely aware of the food of the region, he does manage to pull of something really interesting, sometimes just ugly. This had made us wonder on many occasions”i wonder if I 'll get this in singapore”. Even though the probability of that happening is negligible, I'm amazed as the number of things a local chinese chef can make out of the same raw-materials, are infinitesimal.

Although I have eaten at many places, enough to be unaccountable, there are certain places and their dishes that do stand out for good as well as bad reasons:

1. Mamamia's has quintessentially been a pizza place, but their venture into the chinese domain has been a decent success. I strongly recommend the “Mama's special rice”, which will seem exactly like the ever popular”triple schezwan rice”, but some magic ingredient/s makes it taste particularly and surprisingly different.

2. 5Spice and Gypsy are two places that have completely blown my brain. These are the still upscale chinese restaurants, which subtly claim that they are authentic, with either the waiters that seem indigenous to china or the some really fancy names for their dishes. But even then I can't but be in awe for the meals offered. Out of these gypsy remains to be my favourites, where I could go gaga over the condiments and the main course alike. 5Spice scores with exceptionally good quantity and decent food at a yet nominal charge.

3. Gulshan/Snowpoint is a good place for chinese eatables, but I think the chef is very moody. One can be certain about most of the things ordered there(try crispy chicken, and the rice+gravy combos), but one ghastly experience when I had ordered for “stewed rice”(or something like that), which when was on the table looked really weird. It was bland, thats that! But the look of it was quite amusing at first, then it didn't seem just right. The sauce, not very remotely resembled some kind of an ejaculant. Imagine wiping your lips and chin after that!

4. This was a more recent event at Noorani. I had been there with two other friends, craving for “crispy chicken”. Noorani which otherwise has a reputation of dolling out decent chinese foods in generous quantities at nominal rates, presented us with the most uncanny crispy chicken. We generally have an understanding that crispy chicken is when shredded chicken is batter fried and served after being tossed in a red tangy-spicy sauce. What we got was quite funny, it was deep fried chicken in a green batter, which gave it the look of a herbivores' turd. This was served with cucumber dip(?) which just didn't go well, and it looked more like slime. Never again!

5. This was at a very small shady place in Malwan. I had been there with two other cousins of mine, one of whom was a local. When he placed the order for a Chilly Chicken, he told the guy to put more noodles. I didn't ask, the wait was worth it. It was the normal chilly chicken, only with fried noodles in it, lots of them. The sauce was just laced to it, to give it that perfect consistency and bind. Superb is a small word for that experience.

These instances talk about a miniscule fraction of what I have experienced over a decade and a half. But these restaurants are always out there to top themselves, in either the good food category or about being simply outrageous. Nonetheless we are always welcome to such things, because I strongly feel that indians are very open-minded about treating culinary skills as art forms.

There is something about indian-chinese cuisine that makes it so indian, but with an outsider's appearance. Even then it has gracefully transcended in our lives, and we have accepted it like we do with our blood relatives. We have let it grow, and have made use of it on more than many occasions, mostly to our convenience owing to its flexible nature. And we further watch it spread, rather flourish. I always thought of it to be the indian version of soul-food, with a little foreign inspiration, for it captured the very essence of soul food: the requirements for this cuisine are minimalistic, the portions are gigantic, the ingredients are cheap and local, the meals are far from being considered bland, texture-less, tasteless and insipid, and lastly it has always satiated you, and it always will.

Now every vada-paav wala has “chinese bhajji”, jumbo king has “shezwaan chutney”, and a chinese bhel stall outside every western railway station. Who knows what can be excepted in the future, perhaps idlis dipped in hot-n-sour soup....we'll never know, and then we will.
-Gabo(Gaurang)