IN MUMBAI, HISTORIC TALES, A BIRYANI WITHOUT RICE

If you’re a meat lover in Mumbai, then Khaki Tours’ Mohalla Munch is the food walk for you. It goes through Bhendi Bazaar, one of the oldest Muslim areas in the city, through the bylanes of Bohri Mohalla. “The entire walk covers barely 1 km in 90 minutes, because there are so many stops, and so many stories,” says Bharat Gothoskar, founder of Khaki Tours.

The food of this area comes from the Bohri, Khoja and Konkani Muslim traditions. In the Bohri meals, courses alternate between khara (spicy / salty) and meetha (sweet). “We have about 15 pitstops, which include special kebabs with coriander seeds and a chana curry laced with spleen!”

Most people are intrigued by the Baara Handi (12 Pots) restaurant, where different parts of the goat or buffalo are cooked in 12 different pots, and a serving is made up of a mix of the 12 in whatever combinations you choose — bheja, pichhota, paya. “Some people prefer bhel, a delightful combination of all 12.”

The walk also stops at the century-old Firoze Farsan, which serves a biryani without rice called patrel biryani — colocasia leaves or patrel, coated in a paste made of gram flour and assorted spices, rolled up and slow-cooked. The masala-flecked meat is cooked separately. Once ready, the colocasia is added to the meat. The stories that go with the food serve as the perfect tadka, says Gothoskar, laughing. “We show walkers Temkar Mohalla, where [underworld don] Dawood Ibrahim was born. And Raudat Tahera, the mausoleum of the Syednas, the spiritual head of the Bohri community.” A favourite among almost all walkers, young and old, desi and foreigner, is the Sancha ice-cream. “The sancha is a type of cast — a wooden bucket on the outside and metal container inside. Salt and ice is put in the outer container to freeze a mixture of milk and fruits in the inner container to make a very unusual kind of ice-cream.”

Also very popular is the Chicken Kasturi Sandwich at Jilani’s, named for the kasuri methi that gives it a light-bitter aftertaste. The walk generally ends at India restaurant, which sells shallow-fried Karachi rolls. To Gothoskar, this typifies the cultural confluence that makes the area unique.

On the Khaki Tours food walk in Bhendi Bazaar, Mumbai, stops include the mausoleum of the Syednas, the spiritual head of the Bohri community, as well as streetside eateries serving up everything from tiranga kebabs to patrel biryani, where colocasia leaves are coated with masala, slow-cooked and layered with tender meat.

In old Bhopal, the walk starts at the Taj-ulMasjid, the country’s largest mosque.(Below left) As with the saltysweet breakfast of poha-jalebi, Bhopal’s special falahar is also a mix of sweet and savoury, from sabudana chivda and mawa jalebi to besan laddoo and balushahi.