Regional Thalis in Merchant Bombay

If it�s Wednesday, it should be Rajdhani. That�s the day this nondescript little place between the Dava Bazar and the Attar Market serves its munificent Rajasthani thali. And the thali is as crowded with food as the area is with merchants and tradesmen.

This is merchant Bombay, busy and overactive, for, besides dava (medicine) and attar (perfume) bazars, there is the Lohar Chawl, for electrical goods, Zaveri Bazar, for jewellery, naturally, Nagdevi, for hardware, and the Mulji Jetha and Mangaldas Markets, covered wholesale markets for textiles.

Naturally, reaching Rajdhani through the series of bazars is a task, and parking impossible. Best disembark at Crawford Market and walk the short distance down Sheikh Memon Street, the restaurant is at the end of the street, just before the Jumma Masjid and the perfumeries of all Araby.

I cannot give you more precise directions than this, but Rajdhani is well known in the area and people should be able to guide you. Better still, take a guide with you. I am willing to play the role, a meal at the Rajdhani is always welcome.

I say Wednesday, because the Rajasthani thali is the pick of the week, though the other thalis are equally good. They have different regional foods on different days of the week, for dinner; afternoons, for lunch, it is always Gujarati thali.

Now cut this out and keep it, or, if you don�t want to spoil the magazine, make a note of it in your diary:

Let�s go straight to the thali. It is vegetarian, no liquor service, no beer, but there is jaljeera and a most unique smoked buttermilk, also known as barbecue chaas.

It is included in the price of the thali, as is everything else, including six vegetables, three types of rice, three dals, one kadhi, three types of rotis (make that four), three farsans, two sweets, one of them being unadulterated alphonso nectar, eight different chutneys and pickles, masala papad, curds, raita, all the deshi ghee in the world that you can pour on your food and eat, and white homemade (restaurant made) butter, which serves the same purpose as ghee.

The service is in heavy silver-plated thalis, with silver katoris, made in Moradabad, each thali, minus the food, weighing about 2 kgs. You may have unlimited helpings of all the dishes, including the mangoes, the waiters are well trained and will keep putting things in your thalis if you do not stop them. They have their own tic-tac-toe method of operating, using finger and hand signs to see that your thali remains full. It is the fastest, most organised, waiter service in the country.

The restaurant is long and narrow, tables for four on both sides, like the dining car of a train. Probably that is why it is called the Rajdhani. Started by Ishwarlal Barot in 1946, air-conditioned, refurbished and renamed as Rajdhani in 1987, it is one of the few restaurants in Bombay popular among both vegetarians and non-vegetarians, which is the true test of a restaurant.

The waiters begin with lime, cubes of beetroot, green and sweet chutney, tumbler of jaljeera (have it as an appetiser), a large pappad with a bhelpuri of masala, including, onions, tomatoes, chillies, heaped on top of it, then more chutneys, coriander and palak, a sweet and sour with jaggery and tamarind, garlic (a red lassan paste), my favourite, the sweet shredded mango pickle (chunda), a mustard pickle.

A waiter is shown four fingers, and he hurries with four vegetables in four containers. Jaipuri gatta is pulses and gram flour boiled and made into rolls, and cooked in a thick gravy of curds, with turmeric, hing, cumin seeds, a ginger-garlic paste. And the ker sangri, which is a vegetable available only in the jungles of Bikaner, rather rough on the tongue.

Cooked in its own water, with garlic and cumin paste, nothing else. Squeeze a little lime on it. And the Bikaner sev tomato. They use raw green tomatoes, cut into pieces, not pureed, cooked with mustard and sugar. The sev is cooked with the tomatoes, not put on it afterwards. And tindolas, cooked in a dry masala of coconut and cumin; and there are potatoes in a light gravy, fragrant with fresh tomatoes.

One of the dals, channa, had methi in it, fresh green methi, not the seeds. Plus the dal bhatti churna, Rajasthan�s national dish, the food of the desert. I shall go into details over this. The dal is five dals cooked together overnight on slow coal fires, tur, two mungs (with and without chilka), udad and channa.

Because of the five dals, it is also known as panch kulti dal. The dals are made in ghee, the masalas in the dals are fried in ghee, more ghee is mixed into them before serving, and customers ask for more ghee and pour on it. Bhattis are rotlas, the masculine of rotis, made with wheat. And churnas are the rotlas, after they have been crumbled into small pieces, jaggery and deshi ghee is added to them, they are made into balls and submerged in the dals.

They can be a meal by themselves, but much more has gone before them and much more is to come. My silver thali overflows. For one thing, there is the Surti dal, which you must have with plain steamed rice. It is a tur dal, with jaggery and kokum. And have the kadhi with the khichdi, and the veg pulao by itself, or with the chunda.

And don�t forget the three farsans (the waiting staff�s sign for this is the raising of three fingers). The last time I was there, they had Rajasthani mirchwada, which is the Rajasthan long green chilli, not capsicum, stuffed with potato, and fried like a bhajia. Then there was a potato tikki, done like a sandwich; and dhoklas, stuffed with vegetables and topped with curds. These were the Gujarati dhoklas, made from rice flour and udad dal, disappearing in the mouth. They are white in colour. The dhoklas made from besan are yellow in colour, and then there are the khatta dhoklas, also made from rice flour.

The waiters were by now bringing second and third helpings. They brought two Gujarati dals, one sweet, one not so sweet. I prefer the sweet one. And kadhi, to pour on the khichri. On Sundays, when they have only lunch service, they serve a kadhi fajeto, where the seed of the mango is crushed and put in the kadhi.

I have kept the Rajdhani rotis for last, because they are my favourites. Try all three. There is bhakri, made from wheat flour, kneaded with milk, and oven baked to a biscuit crispness. You dip it in the gravy dishes and eat it. I eat it with dahi. Then there is the thepla, a mixture of gram and wheat flour, with a touch of dudhi, methi, almost anything.

And the bajra or jowar rotla. Put jaggery on it, and deshi ghee, and white butter made at home, and a dash of a fiery red wet garlic chutney. Place it in your mouth. I challenge you, there is no other food like it in the world. They make the garlic chutney for a week at a time. Red chillis, cumin seeds, salt, and they rub a little oil at the start, to preserve the chutney. They churn the white butter every day, and they make the ghee from the butter - or is it the other way around.

There is a dessert, and the mango juice (aam ras). They take 300 to 400 mangoes at a time, all alphonsos, put them in hot water, then squeeze the juice out of them with their hands on to a muslin cloth which covers a large vessel, allowing the juice to slowly seep through.

And the barbecue butter-milk (chaas). It is like having a snake coffee or an Irish coffee in a five-star. The preparation is done on the table, in front of the customer: on a burning piece of coal, a little ghee is dropped, then roasted cumin seeds, black salt, a ginger-garlic paste. As a rich smoke rises, a glass is upturned over it, capturing the smoke.

Then it is turned again and the butter milk, already treated with chopped chillies, etc., is poured into the smoking glass. Not only the drinker, but the whole restaurant gets the aroma of the smoke.And that, I think, unless I have missed a few items, is the end. Price of the thali - Rs. 150.