u/moronbehindthescreen

Khotachiwadi has become famous for its Instagram aesthetics and the whole romantic idea of nostalgia around it now. I grew up 15 minutes away from Khotachiwadi and I have no nostalgic or romantic memories attached to it. The only thing I really carry from there is one visit with my father sometime around 2005 or 2006, when he took me to Anant Ashram for a thali. He told me, with full drama, that rich businessmen from all over Mumbai came here to eat and the owner did not give a f**k. That detail really stayed with me.

Last week I happened to be in Girgaum for some work. Someone had recently told me that Anant Ashram was back. So I thought, why not go meet this mythical Malvani Karl Marx . When I actually looked it up online, my excitement dropped a bit. Anant Ashram has not come back. One of the old cooks has teamed up with a friend of the founder and they now run a small home style place in Kandawadi near Khotachiwadi, called Naik’s.

I am a big fan of gomantak style eateries and those small Malvani joints you usually discover by accident. Naik’s was already all over the web, so I was not expecting some unheard of secret.

We went for an early dinner and met the owner(Rajesh) and the chef (Vijay) who has been cooking since the Anant Ashram days in the early 80's, right up till it shut in 2007. The place is run by the three of them, Vijay, the owner and his wife (Darshana). All through the meal the owner kept calling out, “Vahini he ghya, Vahini te ghya,”. I did not hear him use her actual name even once.

Since running a restaurant with three people takes its own sweet time, we started off with sol kadhi. This pink Malvani lemonade, made with kokum and coconut milk, was very simple and tasted like it had come straight out of a village in coastal Maharashtra.

For food, we began with crab masala and prawns masala. He only had one small vaati of prawns left, which made me a little sad, but whatever we got was good. The masala itself was quite spicy and had a lot of garam masala going on. If they tone that part down a bit, this could easily be one of the best coconut based gravies in Mumbai. The crab and the prawns were both very fresh.

After that our thalis started arriving. We had ordered one surmai thali and one bombil thali. The surmai quality was outstanding, easily one of the best I have had in a while. You can tell the man really knows his fish. That comes only from years of buying it yourself and knowing what to pick. The thali came with rawa fried fish, a fish gravy made with pomfret or surmai head, a little chutney and onions, rice and roti. What really made it stand out from other places was the jawla, the dried shrimp preparation. It had a slightly sweet taste with the onions and peanuts in it, like Malvan’s own version of a Sri Lankan sambol.

The fish gravy was excellent. Very light, not loaded with coconut milk, just mildly spicy and nicely tangy from the kokum. We took refills of that rassa at least 3 times. I would happily give up my omega fish oil pills for that rassa any day.

The only real disappointment was the rice bhakri. It was not baked properly and felt a bit average compared to everything else on the table.

I honestly do not know if this compares to the old Anant Ashram. It has been more than 20 years and I barely remember the food there, only my father’s version of the Malvani Karl Marx.

Naik’s definitely stands on its own feet though. Is this the best Malvani or gomantak food in Mumbai. Probably not. But if you are anywhere near Girgaum and suddenly craving fresh, homely seafood, then yes, it is absolutely worth walking into this little place.

Khotachiwadi has become famous for its Instagram aesthetics and the whole romantic idea of nostalgia around it now. I grew up 15 minutes away from Khotachiwadi and I have no nostalgic or romantic memories attached to it. The only thing I really carry from there is one visit with my father sometime around 2005 or 2006, when he took me to Anant Ashram for a thali. He told me, with full drama, that rich businessmen from all over Mumbai came here to eat and the owner did not give a f**k. That detail really stayed with me.

Last week I happened to be in Girgaum for some work. Someone had recently told me that Anant Ashram was back. So I thought, why not go meet this mythical Malvani Karl Marx . When I actually looked it up online, my excitement dropped a bit. Anant Ashram has not come back. One of the old cooks has teamed up with a friend of the founder and they now run a small home style place in Kandawadi near Khotachiwadi, called Naik’s.

I am a big fan of gomantak style eateries and those small Malvani joints you usually discover by accident. Naik’s was already all over the web, so I was not expecting some unheard of secret.

We went for an early dinner and met the owner(Rajesh) and the chef (Vijay) who has been cooking since the Anant Ashram days in the early 80's, right up till it shut in 2007. The place is run by the three of them, Vijay, the owner and his wife (Darshana). All through the meal the owner kept calling out, “Vahini he ghya, Vahini te ghya,”. I did not hear him use her actual name even once.

Since running a restaurant with three people takes its own sweet time, we started off with sol kadhi. This pink Malvani lemonade, made with kokum and coconut milk, was very simple and tasted like it had come straight out of a village in coastal Maharashtra.

For food, we began with crab masala and prawns masala. He only had one small vaati of prawns left, which made me a little sad, but whatever we got was good. The masala itself was quite spicy and had a lot of garam masala going on. If they tone that part down a bit, this could easily be one of the best coconut based gravies in Mumbai. The crab and the prawns were both very fresh.

After that our thalis started arriving. We had ordered one surmai thali and one bombil thali. The surmai quality was outstanding, easily one of the best I have had in a while. You can tell the man really knows his fish. That comes only from years of buying it yourself and knowing what to pick. The thali came with rawa fried fish, a fish gravy made with pomfret or surmai head, a little chutney and onions, rice and roti. What really made it stand out from other places was the jawla, the dried shrimp preparation. It had a slightly sweet taste with the onions and peanuts in it, like Malvan’s own version of a Sri Lankan sambol.

The fish gravy was excellent. Very light, not loaded with coconut milk, just mildly spicy and nicely tangy from the kokum. We took refills of that rassa at least 3 times. I would happily give up my omega fish oil pills for that rassa any day.

The only real disappointment was the rice bhakri. It was not baked properly and felt a bit average compared to everything else on the table.

I honestly do not know if this compares to the old Anant Ashram. It has been more than 20 years and I barely remember the food there, only my father’s version of the Malvani Karl Marx.

Naik’s definitely stands on its own feet though. Is this the best Malvani or gomantak food in Mumbai. Probably not. But if you are anywhere near Girgaum and suddenly craving fresh, homely seafood, then yes, it is absolutely worth walking into this little place.

For the past several years, Bhendi Bazaar and the neighbouring areas have been witnessing quite a surge in burger joints. The younger generation in these Muslim ghettos has already leaped from the traditional kebab pav to the smash burger. Proximity to the meat market in Null Bazaar can also be a factor.

This time we got to try a classic buff smash burger at a small joint tucked away in a lane off Ali Umar Street, started by a chef who has worked at burger joints in the Middle East. At Rs 205, this smash burger can give most established burger joints in the city a run for their money. Sometimes you find true hidden gems when you are not even looking for them.

What I really liked about the burger was that it was perfect to hold and did not drown in sauce. It kept the focus on the well seasoned buff patty, which is exactly what you want from a burger like this.

The outlet is called Flames..

Seafood boil is the new thing clogging my feed right now, and I keep wondering whether it is just a fad or actually makes sense for a coastal city like ours. It comes from American coastal culture, especially the Lowcountry and Louisiana, where fresh seafood is boiled in big pots and eaten as a communal meal with corn, potatoes and the whole gang on one table. We obviously have our own ways of eating together here, but communal feasting in India usually shows up around festivals, religious events or weddings. Bhandaras are the closest thing, where strangers sit and eat next to each other as an act of service and faith, not for a seafood binge. So on Maharashtra Day, I finally decided to pay my respects to the abundant marine life that Mumbai’s coast gives us. Pun fully intended.

I went for this particular seafood boil over the many Instagram friendly options because it actually looked like the real deal. It was served the way it is meant to be, on the table, all together, not split into pretty individual plates. You share a crab from here, pass a prawn from there, share the gluttony and then look around at equally guilty faces. This is the kind of last supper that probably made Jesus die for our sins. 

Before we actually started eating, the team did a small intro and handed us what I can only call survival gear. Plastic bibs, gloves, tools, the works. It felt like Khatron Ke Khiladi or some other Indian reality show, except here we were eliminating marine life instead of contestants. We were given five sauce options. Chef Aashish came over, looked at us, and straight up told us he was anyway going to give us Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper, because those were his best. But g**nd mein toh kekda tha, so I tried the other three as well.

The butter garlic was great, but it felt too familiar and a bit too rich for this kind of feast. The Sichuan tasted like it belonged with chakli and a large whiskey soda maybe it should have just walked across to Shagun Bar & Restaurant. The Old Bay based one was actually very interesting, proper American boil vibes, but it was spicy in a way that I felt would work better in a single dish than across two massive buckets. So we eventually listened to Aashish and stuck with Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper. The chef knows best. Or that is what we tell ourselves.

The first bucket arrived like a small event. Two large crabs and a dozen king prawns sitting in the darker Singapore Pepper sauce. I picked up the first prawn and bit in. It was so fresh it honestly felt like someone had plucked it out of the sea and dropped it straight into my mouth with a spoonful of sauce. Then it was time to attack the big boys. We cracked, hammered and snipped our way through the shell to get to the sweetest crab meat you can eat as a human being. Dunked that in the pepper sauce and it was properly addictive.

At some point we ordered bread. Plain kulcha. On the house. Who eats kulcha with a seafood boil, right. But this kulcha quietly became the MVP of the table. If Bombay Canteen can put a butter garlic crab kulcha on their menu and make it a thing, why can I not have my own version here. I am saying this very seriously. Kona Kona kulcha is the best kulcha in Mumbai. I would happily write that line a hundred times as punishment on a blackboard.

We were not even done with the first bucket when the second one landed. This time it was clams, squid, baby potatoes and corn on the cob in the Singapore Chilli sauce. I tried drawing a Radcliffe line on the table between the pepper sauce and the chilli sauce. It was not a clean job though (IKYK). The chilli sauce grew on us slowly. With every bite it felt more layered and more robust than the sharp, punchy pepper sauce from the first round. The kulcha somehow tasted even better with this one, and by then I was already on my third kulcha. I almost forgot I had come here for seafood and not for a bread tasting.

The clams were solid, but the squid completely stole the show for me. The last time I remember eating squid that good was on a tiny island in Vietnam. The potatoes and corn were there for when you wanted a break from all the meat and convince yourself you were eating some kind of balanced meal. There was also a very generic mocktail, the kind that feels like a standard welcome drink at events.

It took us more than two hours to work our way through everything. In the end we left only a few potatoes and a couple of corn pieces. There was a round of applause, like we had all just sat through our own version of The Last Supper, only with more kulcha and less betrayal. We ended up sharing seafood and sauces with the table next to us, laughing at each other’s techniques, they laughed at my obsession with kulcha. For a while nobody cared who came from where, what anyone did, what caste, class or religion they belonged to. The only thing binding us was the fact that each of us had paid around 5000 rupees for this bucket. It is expensive. It is also a bit like going to an aquarium, except more fun. Maybe more like Disneyland if you are a seafood person.

I also got to chat with Aashish after the meal, and I think the reason this particular seafood boil works is because he behaves less like a traditional chef and more like a full blown foodie who has somehow got access to a kitchen and a team. He is loud, opinionated, and the energy shows up on the table. That is what you taste in the food. Period.

Seafood boil is the new thing clogging my feed right now, and I keep wondering whether it is just a fad or actually makes sense for a coastal city like ours. It comes from American coastal culture, especially the Lowcountry and Louisiana, where fresh seafood is boiled in big pots and eaten as a communal meal with corn, potatoes and the whole gang on one table. We obviously have our own ways of eating together here, but communal feasting in India usually shows up around festivals, religious events or weddings. Bhandaras are the closest thing, where strangers sit and eat next to each other as an act of service and faith, not for a seafood binge. So on Maharashtra Day, I finally decided to pay my respects to the abundant marine life that Mumbai’s coast gives us. Pun fully intended.

I went for this particular seafood boil over the many Instagram friendly options because it actually looked like the real deal. It was served the way it is meant to be, on the table, all together, not split into pretty individual plates. You share a crab from here, pass a prawn from there, share the gluttony and then look around at equally guilty faces. This is the kind of last supper that probably made Jesus die for our sins. 

Before we actually started eating, the team did a small intro and handed us what I can only call survival gear. Plastic bibs, gloves, tools, the works. It felt like Khatron Ke Khiladi or some other Indian reality show, except here we were eliminating marine life instead of contestants. We were given five sauce options. Chef Aashish came over, looked at us, and straight up told us he was anyway going to give us Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper, because those were his best. But g**nd mein toh kekda tha, so I tried the other three as well.

The butter garlic was great, but it felt too familiar and a bit too rich for this kind of feast. The Sichuan tasted like it belonged with chakli and a large whiskey soda maybe it should have just walked across to Shagun Bar & Restaurant. The Old Bay based one was actually very interesting, proper American boil vibes, but it was spicy in a way that I felt would work better in a single dish than across two massive buckets. So we eventually listened to Aashish and stuck with Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper. The chef knows best. Or that is what we tell ourselves.

The first bucket arrived like a small event. Two large crabs and a dozen king prawns sitting in the darker Singapore Pepper sauce. I picked up the first prawn and bit in. It was so fresh it honestly felt like someone had plucked it out of the sea and dropped it straight into my mouth with a spoonful of sauce. Then it was time to attack the big boys. We cracked, hammered and snipped our way through the shell to get to the sweetest crab meat you can eat as a human being. Dunked that in the pepper sauce and it was properly addictive.

At some point we ordered bread. Plain kulcha. On the house. Who eats kulcha with a seafood boil, right. But this kulcha quietly became the MVP of the table. If Bombay Canteen can put a butter garlic crab kulcha on their menu and make it a thing, why can I not have my own version here. I am saying this very seriously. Kona Kona kulcha is the best kulcha in Mumbai. I would happily write that line a hundred times as punishment on a blackboard.

We were not even done with the first bucket when the second one landed. This time it was clams, squid, baby potatoes and corn on the cob in the Singapore Chilli sauce. I tried drawing a Radcliffe line on the table between the pepper sauce and the chilli sauce. It was not a clean job though (IKYK). The chilli sauce grew on us slowly. With every bite it felt more layered and more robust than the sharp, punchy pepper sauce from the first round. The kulcha somehow tasted even better with this one, and by then I was already on my third kulcha. I almost forgot I had come here for seafood and not for a bread tasting.

The clams were solid, but the squid completely stole the show for me. The last time I remember eating squid that good was on a tiny island in Vietnam. The potatoes and corn were there for when you wanted a break from all the meat and convince yourself you were eating some kind of balanced meal. There was also a very generic mocktail, the kind that feels like a standard welcome drink at events.

It took us more than two hours to work our way through everything. In the end we left only a few potatoes and a couple of corn pieces. There was a round of applause, like we had all just sat through our own version of The Last Supper, only with more kulcha and less betrayal. We ended up sharing seafood and sauces with the table next to us, laughing at each other’s techniques, they laughed at my obsession with kulcha. For a while nobody cared who came from where, what anyone did, what caste, class or religion they belonged to. The only thing binding us was the fact that each of us had paid around 5000 rupees for this bucket. It is expensive. It is also a bit like going to an aquarium, except more fun. Maybe more like Disneyland if you are a seafood person.

I also got to chat with Aashish after the meal, and I think the reason this particular seafood boil works is because he behaves less like a traditional chef and more like a full blown foodie who has somehow got access to a kitchen and a team. He is loud, opinionated, and the energy shows up on the table. That is what you taste in the food. Period.

Seafood boil is the new thing clogging my feed right now, and I keep wondering whether it is just a fad or actually makes sense for a coastal city like ours. It comes from American coastal culture, especially the Lowcountry and Louisiana, where fresh seafood is boiled in big pots and eaten as a communal meal with corn, potatoes and the whole gang on one table. We obviously have our own ways of eating together here, but communal feasting in India usually shows up around festivals, religious events or weddings. Bhandaras are the closest thing, where strangers sit and eat next to each other as an act of service and faith, not for a seafood binge. So on Maharashtra Day, I finally decided to pay my respects to the abundant marine life that Mumbai’s coast gives us. Pun fully intended.

I went for this particular seafood boil over the many Instagram friendly options because it actually looked like the real deal. It was served the way it is meant to be, on the table, all together, not split into pretty individual plates. You share a crab from here, pass a prawn from there, share the gluttony and then look around at equally guilty faces. This is the kind of last supper that probably made Jesus die for our sins. 

Before we actually started eating, the team did a small intro and handed us what I can only call survival gear. Plastic bibs, gloves, tools, the works. It felt like Khatron Ke Khiladi or some other Indian reality show, except here we were eliminating marine life instead of contestants. We were given five sauce options. Chef Aashish came over, looked at us, and straight up told us he was anyway going to give us Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper, because those were his best. But g**nd mein toh kekda tha, so I tried the other three as well.

The butter garlic was great, but it felt too familiar and a bit too rich for this kind of feast. The Sichuan tasted like it belonged with chakli and a large whiskey soda maybe it should have just walked across to Shagun Bar & Restaurant. The Old Bay based one was actually very interesting, proper American boil vibes, but it was spicy in a way that I felt would work better in a single dish than across two massive buckets. So we eventually listened to Aashish and stuck with Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper. The chef knows best. Or that is what we tell ourselves.

The first bucket arrived like a small event. Two large crabs and a dozen king prawns sitting in the darker Singapore Pepper sauce. I picked up the first prawn and bit in. It was so fresh it honestly felt like someone had plucked it out of the sea and dropped it straight into my mouth with a spoonful of sauce. Then it was time to attack the big boys. We cracked, hammered and snipped our way through the shell to get to the sweetest crab meat you can eat as a human being. Dunked that in the pepper sauce and it was properly addictive.

At some point we ordered bread. Plain kulcha. On the house. Who eats kulcha with a seafood boil, right. But this kulcha quietly became the MVP of the table. If Bombay Canteen can put a butter garlic crab kulcha on their menu and make it a thing, why can I not have my own version here. I am saying this very seriously. Kona Kona kulcha is the best kulcha in Mumbai. I would happily write that line a hundred times as punishment on a blackboard.

We were not even done with the first bucket when the second one landed. This time it was clams, squid, baby potatoes and corn on the cob in the Singapore Chilli sauce. I tried drawing a Radcliffe line on the table between the pepper sauce and the chilli sauce. It was not a clean job though (IKYK). The chilli sauce grew on us slowly. With every bite it felt more layered and more robust than the sharp, punchy pepper sauce from the first round. The kulcha somehow tasted even better with this one, and by then I was already on my third kulcha. I almost forgot I had come here for seafood and not for a bread tasting.

The clams were solid, but the squid completely stole the show for me. The last time I remember eating squid that good was on a tiny island in Vietnam. The potatoes and corn were there for when you wanted a break from all the meat and convince yourself you were eating some kind of balanced meal. There was also a very generic mocktail, the kind that feels like a standard welcome drink at events.

It took us more than two hours to work our way through everything. In the end we left only a few potatoes and a couple of corn pieces. There was a round of applause, like we had all just sat through our own version of The Last Supper, only with more kulcha and less betrayal. We ended up sharing seafood and sauces with the table next to us, laughing at each other’s techniques, they laughed at my obsession with kulcha. For a while nobody cared who came from where, what anyone did, what caste, class or religion they belonged to. The only thing binding us was the fact that each of us had paid around 5000 rupees for this bucket. It is expensive. It is also a bit like going to an aquarium, except more fun. Maybe more like Disneyland if you are a seafood person.

I also got to chat with Aashish after the meal, and I think the reason this particular seafood boil works is because he behaves less like a traditional chef and more like a full blown foodie who has somehow got access to a kitchen and a team. He is loud, opinionated, and the energy shows up on the table. That is what you taste in the food. Period.

Seafood boil is the new thing clogging my feed right now, and I keep wondering whether it is just a fad or actually makes sense for a coastal city like ours. It comes from American coastal culture, especially the Lowcountry and Louisiana, where fresh seafood is boiled in big pots and eaten as a communal meal with corn, potatoes and the whole gang on one table. We obviously have our own ways of eating together here, but communal feasting in India usually shows up around festivals, religious events or weddings. Bhandaras are the closest thing, where strangers sit and eat next to each other as an act of service and faith, not for a seafood binge. So on Maharashtra Day, I finally decided to pay my respects to the abundant marine life that Mumbai’s coast gives us. Pun fully intended.

I went for this particular seafood boil over the many Instagram friendly options because it actually looked like the real deal. It was served the way it is meant to be, on the table, all together, not split into pretty individual plates. You share a crab from here, pass a prawn from there, share the gluttony and then look around at equally guilty faces. This is the kind of last supper that probably made Jesus die for our sins. 

Before we actually started eating, the team did a small intro and handed us what I can only call survival gear. Plastic bibs, gloves, tools, the works. It felt like Khatron Ke Khiladi or some other Indian reality show, except here we were eliminating marine life instead of contestants. We were given five sauce options. Chef Aashish came over, looked at us, and straight up told us he was anyway going to give us Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper, because those were his best. But g**nd mein toh kekda tha, so I tried the other three as well.

The butter garlic was great, but it felt too familiar and a bit too rich for this kind of feast. The Sichuan tasted like it belonged with chakli and a large whiskey soda maybe it should have just walked across to Shagun Bar & Restaurant. The Old Bay based one was actually very interesting, proper American boil vibes, but it was spicy in a way that I felt would work better in a single dish than across two massive buckets. So we eventually listened to Aashish and stuck with Singapore Chilli and Singapore Pepper. The chef knows best. Or that is what we tell ourselves.

The first bucket arrived like a small event. Two large crabs and a dozen king prawns sitting in the darker Singapore Pepper sauce. I picked up the first prawn and bit in. It was so fresh it honestly felt like someone had plucked it out of the sea and dropped it straight into my mouth with a spoonful of sauce. Then it was time to attack the big boys. We cracked, hammered and snipped our way through the shell to get to the sweetest crab meat you can eat as a human being. Dunked that in the pepper sauce and it was properly addictive.

At some point we ordered bread. Plain kulcha. On the house. Who eats kulcha with a seafood boil, right. But this kulcha quietly became the MVP of the table. If Bombay Canteen can put a butter garlic crab kulcha on their menu and make it a thing, why can I not have my own version here. I am saying this very seriously. Kona Kona kulcha is the best kulcha in Mumbai. I would happily write that line a hundred times as punishment on a blackboard.

We were not even done with the first bucket when the second one landed. This time it was clams, squid, baby potatoes and corn on the cob in the Singapore Chilli sauce. I tried drawing a Radcliffe line on the table between the pepper sauce and the chilli sauce. It was not a clean job though (IKYK). The chilli sauce grew on us slowly. With every bite it felt more layered and more robust than the sharp, punchy pepper sauce from the first round. The kulcha somehow tasted even better with this one, and by then I was already on my third kulcha. I almost forgot I had come here for seafood and not for a bread tasting.

The clams were solid, but the squid completely stole the show for me. The last time I remember eating squid that good was on a tiny island in Vietnam. The potatoes and corn were there for when you wanted a break from all the meat and convince yourself you were eating some kind of balanced meal. There was also a very generic mocktail, the kind that feels like a standard welcome drink at events.

It took us more than two hours to work our way through everything. In the end we left only a few potatoes and a couple of corn pieces. There was a round of applause, like we had all just sat through our own version of The Last Supper, only with more kulcha and less betrayal. We ended up sharing seafood and sauces with the table next to us, laughing at each other’s techniques, they laughed at my obsession with kulcha. For a while nobody cared who came from where, what anyone did, what caste, class or religion they belonged to. The only thing binding us was the fact that each of us had paid around 5000 rupees for this bucket. It is expensive. It is also a bit like going to an aquarium, except more fun. Maybe more like Disneyland if you are a seafood person.

I also got to chat with Aashish after the meal, and I think the reason this particular seafood boil works is because he behaves less like a traditional chef and more like a full blown foodie who has somehow got access to a kitchen and a team. He is loud, opinionated, and the energy shows up on the table. That is what you taste in the food. Period.