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Buns to die for A dummy's guide to vegetarian restaurants By Cecil Pinto Whenever our kids get bored with home food, which is once every two days on an average, we go into town to have a vegetarian snack or a meal. The long explanation for this choice of cuisine is that the food is fresher, better for the health and the environment, and blah blah blah. The short explanation is that veg food is much cheaper. Veg restaurants in Goa can be categorized under three main heads: Goan, non-Goan (pronounced Udipi) and non-Goan multi-cuisine. Of course on the beach belt there are restaurants labeled as 'vegetarian' whose basic purpose is for 'society' folks (foreigners and Indians) to impress other society folks about how knowledgeable they are in terms of foreign food and how much they love conspicuous consumption. "Dahling have you tried Eliza's tofu a la borscht avec falafel? Just 30 calories." "No sweetie, these days I'm so into Kinsley's tempeh guacamole. They serve it with braised leeks and okra patties. It's a steal at Rs. 600/- for a thimble full." "Ohhh! I think I'm coming. Let's go!" I'm sure these 'fine dining' veg places must be importing their expensive ingredients from exotic locales and the food preparation must involve an intricate process of steaming and sautéing or whatever, but quite frankly I find a standard wada-sambhar much more tastier and fulfilling - and pocket-friendly. It probably has more to do with my lower middle-class wallet than my unrefined taste buds. Add to that also the fact that for the cost of a glass of wine at one of these places I could buy half a causo (10 bottles) of premium Caju Feni from Siolim. But I am digressing from the topic. At all Goan veg restaurants the basic snack on offer is bhaji-panv (vegetable with local bread) in three different varieties batat (potato), tamat (tomato), ussal (beans) and pattov (chick peas). You can order these singly or in a 'mix' Eg. batat-tamat mix. The moment you place your order the waiter will turn in the direction of the kitchen and shout 'Ek batat-tamat mix ghe!' Now 'ghe' in Konkani means 'take' so essentially he is telling the cook to take a bhaji when actually the cook should give a bhaji. It is a complex coding system which we will try to unravel when we analyse why 'buns' have no singular form as in "Ek buns ghe!" Buns is a bun baked from maida (finely ground wheat flour) with a crispy surface and soft inside. When dunked into a hot cup of tea, it is to die for. Other snacks in Goan veg restaurants include batatwada (mix bhaji fried in a spherical coating of gram-flour), samosa (mix bhaji deep fried in a triangular or tetrahedron shell of maida), bhojeam (sliced onion-chillies fried in gram-flour) and capam (fine circular slivers of potato fried in gram-flour) and mirchi (large green chillies fried whole in guess what? Gram-flour!). The chillies are sometimes slit before frying to allow the pungency to disperse and thus make them ineffective as purgatives. In days gone by a trip to the city would mean a stop at a non-Goan veg restaurant where we would indulge in a Masala Dosa or a Dahi Wada or a Idli or an eggless Tomato Omlette or a Thali. Some weeks back at a non-Goan veg restaurant I watched two elderly village type Catholic aunties at the next table order a Panv-Bhaji. While eating they complained how the bhaji at so-and-so veg restaurant in the village was so much better. What they didn't seem to realise was that they had ordered a pan-fried spicy Panv-Bhaji instead of a bhaji-panv. Big difference! It has been statistically proven that the time between ordering and being served a snack or meal in a veg restaurant in India is anywhere between 30 and 90 seconds. MacDonalds spends millions of dollars on research every year to beat this record but they are nowhere close. And they call themselves the leaders of the 'fast' food industry. Bah! Nor have they figured out how the management decides who takes the orders, who cleans the table and who constantly mops the floor on hands and knees. And why only the instant Nescafe powder is kept at the cash counter whereas all other foodstuff is in the kitchen or pantry. The adventure for my family is when we visit non-Goan multi-cuisine veg restaurants and order stuff totally by instinct. I am sure that a Khada Handi Panv-Bhaji has more to it than just being served in an upright vessel, and a Navratna Kurma is not some sort of an award. Paneer is cottage cheese but, "But what's the difference between a Paneer Peshwari and a Paneer Mutter?" I mutter, leave alone the Kadai Dingri or Aloo Paratha. Speaking of Parathas you also get Naans, Rotis and Chappatis. All are basically flattened breads used to scoop up your food but should never be mistaken for a Puri, Bhatura, Appam or Kulcha. Don't ask me why. And Gobi is not a dessert! Invariably, and possibly because of the existence of food-dummies like me, all the Indian multi-cuisine veg restaurants have illustrations on the walls or on the menus that give you an idea what to expect when you order something like the outlandish sounding Kashmiri Dum Alu. But the pictures don't always match what appears on your plate. The best strategy to follow is to do what people at restaurants over the world do when they see something attractive being eaten at the next table, "Get me some of that, whatever it is!" The trick is to do this in an inconspicuous manner and get your requirements across to the waiter without letting the people at the other table know. If they know that you are copying their food choices they will give you pitiful looks and whisper surreptitiously among themselves. You will probably be the conversation piece, and joke, at their family occasions for many more weeks. "Patelji you must listen to this" "What yaaar Shah?" "We were in Gova no, at this restaurant no, and these Goanese at the other table were ordering whatever we were ordering." "So what yaar?" "Arre Patelji, they are in their own state and they don't know what food to be ordering?" "What type restaurant it was yaar?" "Gujarati restaurant of course" "What you were expecting them to do yaar?" ---------- The column above appeared in Gomantak Times dated 8th January 2009 =====