A famous SoBo eatery gives its menu a mini makeover to celebrate delicacies from North Indian cuisine
Nalli nihari
Back home in our sleepy hometown called the City of Joy, we often woke up to the aroma of onions being caramelised on a tawa, and as we groggily made our way to get refreshed, we would be subsumed in the fragrance of pure ghee. More than the strong mint in our toothpastes, it was the robust smell of freshly grounded garam masala that woke us up. We knew then that guests were coming over. The pile of clean, washed and ironed bed linen that was usually locked away was another indication.
So, when part-owner-part-chef Navin Kacherla of SoBo's popular North Indian eatery, The Charcoal Kitchen, confirms that they have a new menu, we are as ecstatic as we are inquisitive. "Food can be poison or medicine. What we are doing here is that we're going back to the days when food was healthy and nutritious. We try to focus on the best of the stuff with respect to ingredients as well as methods such as slow-cooking," Kacherla tells us.
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Navin Kachelra
"What we do not have in our kitchen are things like dalda, soda, additives and colour. Even the daal that we make here is prepared without butter or cream. So, while we have always emphasised on traditional cooking methods, we are taking it a step further with these new inclusions" he adds.
New on the menu are dishes such as yakhni pulao containing tender mutton, which is slow-cooked along with fragrant long grain basmati rice with yoghurt and fried onions. And daal gosht, a dish that brings back memories of our mother squeezing generous amounts of lime juice on bowls full of the Hyderabadi dish. Made with two to three types of lentils and mutton cooked in spices and tamarind, the dish would be topped with copious amounts of caramelised onions and coriander. Also on the menu is kachchi gosht ki biryani, a succulent layered dish which is made with mutton marinated in spices, raw papaya and curd and then cooked with rice. We remember devouring it on our aunt's terrace during wintry nights.
Kachchi gosht ki Biryani
The greasy butter chicken overloaded with processed cream, the buff tikkis oozing hydrogenated vegetable oil, the flavourless-but-affordable plates of biryani with emaciated chicken pieces — away from our sleepy city, we have learnt to appreciate these things. So, it is difficult to contain our happiness, now that we know of a place that serves fare that is minutely akin to maa ka haath ka khaana.
Daal Gosht
Time: 12 pm to 4 pm; 6.30 pm to 11.30 pm
At: Shahid Bhagat Singh Road, Colaba.
Call: 9082018322
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