Badshahs Of The Falooda Business!

MARK MANUEL goes eating out to the 100-year-old Badshah Falooda House in Bombay and meets the Irani family that introduced Persia�s national drink to the country.

I QUOTE my guru, the great and late gourmet and pioneer of the eating out column, Busybee: Now that summer is here, the nicest place to go to, and take your children to, is the Badshah Cold Drink Depot and Annexe at Crawford Market in Bombay. Go in the heat of the afternoon, when the sun is at its zenith, walk through the ground-floor, with the miniature mango trees on each table, past the proprietor sitting at the galla in time-old Irani style, climb the staircase and go through the glass-door into the mezzanine, return the smart salute of the uniformed doorman, then settle down on a table.

Let your children begin with a mango juice, then a chickoo milkshake, a strawberry ice-cream, and a Royal Falooda. For yourself, choose a butter milk or a melon juice, a mango melba, a Kesar Falooda. Let the wife order for herself. It may cost you a tidy sum, but think how much more it would cost you if you take your family to a hill-station. It is difficult to recommend specifics at Badshah, because everything there pleases the eye, the taste, the soul. And every item is a health food, pure and unadulterated, prepared on the premises and mostly in front of the customer, and guaranteed to wipe the sweat off your brow.

Since this is mango season, we will begin with the mangoes. Not that the mango is a seasonal fruit at Badshah. It is available all year round. In the summer, it is Alphonso from Ratnagiri, that king among fruits. Later, the varieties change, Lalbaug, Peeyu, Neelam and Raval from Chennai, but the mangoes are there, and they are always available in all their various preparations. They include a large glass of mango milk shake for Rs. 58, the Alphonso in a semi-solid state, put in the shaker, then the milk from the dairy of one of Badshah�s partners, A. S. Momin (better known as Salambhai), added to it and the whole thing mixed. Nobody in Bombay serves a milkshake like this. That is why Badshah is known as the king of quality.

The mango juice is Rs. 65, same size, and includes the juice of one-and-half mango. Then there is the mango ice-cream (Rs.18), all the ice-creams � pista, butter-scotch, chocolate, strawberry � are priced at Rs. 18. The mango melba, a speciality of the place, is Rs. 80. In a bowl you get mango slices, two scoops of ice-creams, one mango and one pista, jelly and a biscuit, what are known as the ice-cream biscuits. Fresh stocks of mangoes come from the Vashi market every day.

The mango also forms a theme for the restaurant. At the Badshah Annexe, each table has a small mango tree in its centre. Actually, it is a bracket, cleverly designed, with mango leaves arranged in the brackets and fresh mangoes tied to them. The mango leaves are changed daily. The whole decor is fresh, nothing plastic, and, when you sit at a table, you get the aroma of fresh mangoes dangling in front of your nose. The mini-mango trees are just one of the displays at the Badshah Annexe. There is an entire wall covered with fruits, almost all the fruits in the world, apples, mosambis, chickoos, pomegranates, fringed by pineapples. And they are not just on display, they are used daily and replaced.

Badshah refers to B.A.Badshah, who had seven Badshah fruit juice shops in Bombay in the early 1900s. He was a kind man and a good employer, and as it happens with such persons, he died at the early age of 38, leaving no children. So, by his will, he left each of his seven shops with one of his loyal servants. The Badshah at Crawford Market was inherited by Merwan Jehangir Irani, Badshah�s manager. The story continues. Enter Aspi Irani, a 12-year-old boy who came to Bombay from Iran and started working at Badshah, cleaning the place, the dishes, arranging the fruits. Merwan Irani was impressed with the little boy. When he grew up, he gave him his daughter Yasmin in marriage and his shop. The shop is now 100 years old! Aspi passed away in 1996, but Yasmin has survived him and runs the place with her daughter Behnaz�s husband, Behram P. Zadeh, and Salambhai as partner. The Iranis even successfully opened a Badshah in Pune�s East Street, which Behram runs on his own and on the same principles as the Badshah in Bombay. It serves the same variety of fruit juices, ice-creams, sherbets and faloodas.

Being Iranis, the speciality of the shop, naturally, is the falooda, Zoroastrian Persia�s national drink. About 65 per cent of the Bombay Badshah�s total business is in the faloodas, tall, cooling milk-and-syrup drinks. You may order any of the eight types of faloodas. The Royal Falooda is the most popular, priced at Rs. 29, made with the shop�s own rose syrup, its own tabela�s milk, vermicelli from maize flour, the black cooling seeds (sabjah or takmaria, it is called, available at dryfruit stores), and topped with the shop�s own ice-cream.

The Kesar Falooda is Rs. 40 and has kesar syrup, extracted from genuine saffron from Kashmir. The Kulfi Falooda, at Rs. 37, topped by kulfi. And the Shirazi Falooda, at Rs. 46, the milk thick and creamy, boiled to more than half its original volume, topped with a scoop of pista ice-cream and with chopped almonds, cashewnuts, generously sprinkled on it. You mix the syrup, the milk and the ice-cream, then eat it with your spoon or drink it in slow, deep gulps. And summer turns into winter.

In the mid-Eighties, Badshah introduced vegetarian fast food in Bombay. Burgers, pizzas, bhel puri, sandwiches, pav bhaji. Naturally, the food section became popular too. Now you can go to Badshah and have a full meal. But always end with a Royal Falooda.