Flavour of season: From Mummy’s mutton biryani to Dadi’s dal dhokli

On Saturday, eight Mumbaikars rang the doorbell of a Colaba apartment. Inside its sunlit living-room, they guzzled glasses of chilled watermelon juice, spiked with rose-syrup. The group then took their places at the table for a three-course meal of mutton biryani, paaya soup, drumsticks in a Bohri masala, and chicken Angara. It was a spread that 59-year-old Nafisa Kapadia had spent the morning cooking in the rasoi of her home, and the fifth meal for the recently launched house-dining service, The Bohri Kitchen.
“Since I was a kid, mom had always gotten fantastic feedback for her food,” says account planner Munaf Kapadia who set up The Bohri Kitchen last month. “After I did my MBA, it struck me that this could be a business opportunity—hosting meals serving authentic Bohri cuisine that my family has regularly eaten at home.” Mummy Kapadia, who had always had an entrepreneurial side, enthusiastically came onboard. Menus were planned, two members of the domestic staff helped out with the cooking, and a Facebook page was set up. Guests waddled away with full tummies after the first meal, raving about the chicken in a cashew gravy and kheema samosas.
Today, at the other end of the city, ten guests will dig into a traditional meal from rural Assam, called “Na-Khuwa Bhooj”. Prepared to celebrate the season’s first harvest, it will include pork served with mustard greens, goose meat with ash gourd, matimah or black dal, and a dessert of puffed rice, jaggery and cream. The host at the Malad home is Gitika Saikia, who quit a corporate job in August to pursue her new career fulltime.
Saikia and the Kapadias are among a host of Mumbaikars who have given the traditional home-cooked meal a professional turn in the past year. Through entrepreneurial ventures like The Bohri Kitchen and Gypsy Kitchen, websites such as Meal Tango and Once Upon My Kitchen that let one host or attend a traditional meal, and the Secret Ingredient pop-ups by Small Fry Co, ghar ka khana has never been as glamorous.
“There are so many great traditional dishes made in people’s own kitchens that we would never get to try otherwise,” says Saket Khanna, co-founder of the Meal Tango website, considered the frontrunner for at-home meals. “And along with the food, you get a glimpse into that community’s culture.” All aspiring hosts are carefully vetted and menus discussed but ultimately, the cook holds the reins.
There’s a story to be discovered behind every dish, adds Sheetal Rajasekharan, who set up Once Upon My Kitchen with her husband Ranjith. The idea for the online platform came to the duo while they were living abroad and longing for a meal just the way mummy might have made it. “There was a large expat community there and at the end of a long day, we would all talk about how much we missed the food back home.” That eventually led to a website where one could tuck into what was simmering inside other communities’ kitchens. On its roster are cuisines like Sindhi, Assamese, Malayali, Maharashtrian and Rajasthani. Guests have included young professionals, couples, restaurant chefs and even an 85-year-old gentleman who dug into Marwari and Malvani dishes.
The Assamese meals hosted by Saikia are where many Mumbaikars have had their first taste of the region’s food. Saikia belongs to the Sonowal Kachari tribal community but her cooking also has a Bodo influence from her husband’s side. “The dishes I make are difficult to find even in Guwahati’s restaurants,” she says.
Aside from taking their community’s cuisine to new palates, the dining services have opened wider avenues for the cooks. After meals organized through Once Upon My Kitchen and Meal Tango, Saikia set up a catering business and retails traditional pork pickles. Bandra resident Sneha Nair runs the catering service Poppadum along with weekend Onam sadyas.
“These meals are delicious and also healthy because they’re home-made,” says Rashmi Sharma who attended a Sindhi spread by Secret Ingredient. “You get to meet and eat with new people. What unites you is your love of food.”