CROWN BAKERY, STORES and RESTAURANT, Mahim. .

We heard just yesterday that a little bit of local charm has dissapeared from LJ Road, Mahim.

Landmark Irani CROWN BAKERY STORES & RESTAURANT closed this week - the adjacent bakery is still operating but is not expected to last for too much longer.

We were fortunate to grab a chai and bun maska at CROWN just last month - here are a few photos we took that afternoon.

We'll miss taking a chai while enjoying the simple pleasure of watching the fish flutter, dive and dart in CROWN'S small back wall aquarium.

IMAGES:
Crown Bakery, Restaurant and Stores, Mahim. March 2009.
COPYRIGHT.

the Irani restaurant sings to me. .

George Grosz had his Berlin cafes, Toulouse Lautrec his Moulin Rouge – and what the hell – I had my Bombay Irani.

There's this thing about the Irani café that draws me like a magnet. Especially the downmarket ones. Carelessly scattered and heaped ashtrays, half empty beer bottles , chipped tea cups, sullen tired waiters and a customer base that encompasses all denominations of this brave struggling species known as Mumbaikars. If asked to quickly pick three random images from my consciousness to define this city I'd pick the Irani, the Bombay Fiat taxi and the stock exchange building – in that order. And if anything symbolizes the cosmopolitan nature of this city, it is the corner Irani. My first tryst with bun-maskapao-keema-chai destiny took place in 1987, shortly after coming to Bombay to seek my (still elusive) fortune. It was an Irani called Fairdeal Restaurant on Linking Road in Bandra (W) and I was looking for a place to have breakfast.

I had just taken up a paying guest accommodation at Pali Hill with a Sindhi family the night before and had very little money on me. The first impression I got on entering the cool dark interior after my eyes had adjusted from the blazing heat outside, was of absolute disorder. There were cartons everywhere – on the tables, in the corners of the restaurant which was not a restaurant but a store which also sold food and therefore also was a restaurant…and there were egg racks nestling close to Bisleri bottles which snuck up comfortably with stacks of pao. Yellow Amul butter blocks cut up into little pieces lay in the open on the sideboard invitingly for flies…and a thin dyspeptic looking chap was slicing pao with a long thin knife that looked more like a tape measure.

But what is indelibly printed in my memory is the owner. He had skin like parchment and piercing eyes and a monumental nose. He had bright orange hair. And a cigarette jutted out of his mouth like it was an extension of him, cousin to the nose as it were. Great plumes of evil cheap smoke wreathed themselves around this striking personality as I waited for my order, and looking around me at this ramshackle scene lit up inadequately by the dim tube lights, I knew. I knew I had to paint these people, that owner sitting behind his ancient phone, the dyspeptic chappie with the knife, the lazy bulbous fans hanging down from the ceiling and the porcine broker trying to con the old couple in the table next to me. I saw the dust mites riding the rays of sunlight that were sheared three ways through the exhaust fan and watched them settling gently on the Amul butter with fascination. What could be more beautiful? George Grosz had his Berlin cafes, Toulouse Lautrec his Moulin Rouge – and what the hell – I had my Bombay Irani.

No matter how dauntingly expensive a city may be, no matter how hopelessly out of reach those grails of success that we have each of us pledged to pursue would seem, every civilized place has its respite. A place where you can say time out and rest your feet. Every bonecrushing system has its cracks where an ant in the world of giants may exist in grace for a while. In 1987, a fellow who had just left the safety of his family and hometown with no great job to speak of could still eat his fill in an Irani for 15 bucks. Today, even with inflation it's only 30 bucks.

When I see the patrons of the Irani tables, I am reminded of that fact. Very few of them go to admire the Belgian mirrors or the quaint furniture or the architecture. When I paint, it is not the mirror but the faces the mirror has seen over a hundred years that I paint. The migrants, the dispossessed, the students, small businessmen that bring colour and life to this city. That is the lifeblood of my cavas. Most of them have moved on and would not feel the slightest pang if they heard an Irani had been torn down and a branded retail outlet had come up in its place.

But there was an Irani hotel for them when they had needed it. There had been in their past the grace of an exquisitely crafted cupboard with inscriptions at the top and the respite of a 2 rupee cup of tea. There had been a marbletop table to sit at while worrying about whether there was enough money to take the Virar local back home.

When I paint the patrons of an Irani I also know that many of them have not taken that giant step forward. I can see it in the hunch of their backs and the hollows of their eyes. But there is place for them in Mumbai too - as there must be in every civilization worth its name. At least I hope so. If every chawl and wadi in Mumbai is torn down, and every green street corner squared away with chrome and steel and everything available inside a tinted glass fronted box at high prices, where do they go?

As we paper over the cracks and leave no rough edges or untidyness that may embarrass us, we also leach out the colors of diversity, and disavow our past. Art does not sit well with gentrification and uniformity. If you hang up Van Gogh's Potato Eaters on your pristine walls or Ramkinkar Beij's wild landscapes, should we not spare a thought for the source?

The Irani restaurant in its dying throes sings to me of much more than what is inside it. Beyond its check patterned floor is the dull concrete that inches closer every day.
I must paint quickly before it encroaches my canvas too.

GAUTAM BENEGAL
WORDS and IMAGES COPYRIGHT GAUTAM BENEGAL, 2008. All rights reserved.

1 minute, 32 seconds : Yazdani Restaurant & Bakery, Fort {2008}

Brabourne Restaurant, Dhobi Talao

They contributed in their own little way to the growth of Bombay, a city which has completely changed character.
RASHID IRANI

My name is Rashid Irani, though our family name is actually Bahmani. But a lot of Iranis in Bombay have kept, and I am one of them, the surname Irani. Actually, I only found out I had a family surname when I tried to get an Iranian passport. Til then I didn’t even know that I had another surname. I always thought it was just Irani. Funny, really.

My very first years, maybe four or five years, my parents used to live in kind of sprawling chawl, which is a huge kind of, you know, a number of flats, a number of families occupying those flats, and this was at Fort Market, very close to Flora Fountain. It was predominantly Parsi and Catholic at that point of time. Later, we moved over here to Dhobi Talao.

Dhobi Talao was mainly Catholic and Zoroastrian then; Catholics for the reason that in those days Goa was not connected by air from Bombay, and the majority of the Goans were, and still are, employed on ships, in all categories, so whenever they would sign off from a ship they would land up in Dhobi Talao, and this was the place where there were various Goan clubs- living quarters with one huge room where a lot of people slept. What would happen is the moment they would sign off the ship they would temporarily stay here til they made arrangements to go to Goa. And of course at that time there were plenty of Zoroastrians - Parsis and Iranis - living around here too.

My father Rustom Aspandiar Bahmani emigrated from Iran in the late 1920s and like most Zoroastrian Iranians who came to Bombay at that time he came from the main centre, being Yazd, villages in and around Yazd. It was quite an arduous journey coming to India via Pakistan, and they got into a few difficulties along the way, but finally made it to Bombay and they started these restaurants, these tea shops and provision stores, and they succeeded in business beyond, I am sure, their wildest ambitions. Brabourne opened in about 1932, and my father started working here in 1934. The place was originally a stable for horses.

I'd say Iranis did well because they had the knack of melding into the surroundings quite comfortably, I guess because of the shop. I think that is one of the best things about running a business like this - you come into contact with a wide spectrum of people on a daily basis, so you have to, per se, interact with them, otherwise you'd have no hope of succeeding!

The Iranis of course they were very, very hard working, and despite not having education in the formal sense, they had tremendous business acumen;they were hard working and practical, despite the fact that we'd get called junglees - which basically means rough, stupid, idiots. I sometimes feel Iranis get tired of being seen that way, it's so inaccurate.

A really vivid memory for me goes back to my days at St Xaviers - the local Jesuit school, and I had this teacher, I still remember his name, he was fearsome, but he was also, well, I actually grew fond of him, and one day, the very first day of class, when he was reading out the roll, he came to my name, stopped, looked up and asked me ‘what do your parents do?’ so I said “my father runs a tea shop”.

From that time on, he would invariably in class refer to me as ‘chaiwalla’ – a chaiwalla being someone who makes and sells tea. You know, at first I was really riled, especially since some of the other students, I mean my class mates also, started teasing me and continued to call me ‘chaiwalla’. I was angry at him, and since he was the teacher I couldn’t do anything. It was only much later that I realised this was his way of addressing all Iranis; a couple of my Irani friends who were 1 year senior said ‘why are you getting so upset?'

But I just didn't understand why it was so funny to be a chaiwalla's son, for Iranis like my parents slogged all their lives. The shop was their be all and end all – they would spend maybe 16 to 18 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year at work, but one of the things of course happening in those days was that each of these restaurants, they were rarely singularly owned, there were no single proprietors; there would normally be a partnership between 3 Iranians, or more.

Which meant that once a year maybe, or once every two years, one of the partners would take a long break – an extended vacation of a month, or two months. My father and mother invariably took my three brothers and myself for a holiday during our school vacation, mainly to this lovely place called Devlali which is an army cantonment about four hours away, and I have very, very fond memories of that place - for it was at a little cinema there called the Cathay I first fell in love with film.

I think what distinguished these Irani cafes was you could sit on a table with just one cup of tea and read the newspaper for hours on end, and you could be sure that you would never be asked to leave – that was one of the great things, so they became a kind of meeting point for a lot of people - there'd be innocuous debates to the more kind of intellectual discourses, everything took place within the confines of the Irani café.

Brabourne for me is, I think, a great institution. It has in its own way, and going back to the chaiwalla thing, you know one of the things I always feel, is that I am grateful for my father and his partners who started this place, for contributing, if only as chaiwallas, to the city. It is amazing that they contributed in their own little way to the growth of Bombay, a city which has completely changed character; it really no longer exists as it once did.

Today Dhobi Talao is increasingly a commercial hub. Earlier it was predominantly a residential area, today it is commercial. Within a decade I can see a whole slew of malls dotting the skyline around here. We are next in line, I suppose.

From an interview with RASHID IRANI, April 20, 2007

BRABOURNE CLOSED AFTER 76 YEARS ON APRIL 26, 2008

IMAGES: top to bottom:

RASHID IRANI, Brabourne Restaurant, Dhobi Talao, ca1990, photographer Raghubir Singh, copyright Raghubir Singh

BRABOURNE RESTAURANT, Dhobi Talao, 2008
ADVERTISEMENT for BRABOURNE RESTAURANT from Hormusji Dhunjishaw Darukhanawala, Parsi Lustre on Indian Soil, published by Claridge, Bombay, 1939
BRABOURNE RESTAURANT, Dhobi Talao, 2007

BRABOURNE RESTAURANT, Dhobi Talao, 2008

"places time forgot". . .

"Mumbai's Irani cafes", says photojournalist JEWELLA C. MIRANDA, "... are the places time forgot. Little pockets of nostalgia dotting unlikely corners of the city, swathed in sepia, staring out as the world outside moves just a little faster every year".

Jimmy Boy, Horniman Circle, Fort

Cafe Military, Fort

Kyani & Co., Dhobi Talao

Kyani & Co., Dhobi Talao

Kyani & Co., Dhobi Talao

New Country Liquor Bar, Fort

Britannia, Ballard Estate

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT: Jewella C. Miranda

BOMBAY TO SONAPUR HAI* 3: Kyani & Co., Dhobi Talao

Kyani is now 103 years old; we are supposed to be the oldest Irani cafe still operating.
AFLATOON SHOKRIYE

My name is Aflatoon Khodadad Shokriye. Khodadad is my fathers name, Shokriye is our family name. Aflatoon Khodadad Shokriye. I came to Bombay from the city of Yazd in Iran in 1948. My father was here, he sent me a visa, student visa to study here. At that time I was 18 years old.

Image: Passenger docks, Karachi Port, ca 1940

The trip was during monsoon, up to Quetta it was OK- we went from Yazd to Kerman, Kerman to Zahedan, Zahedan to Quetta. From Quetta again we came to Karachi, from Karachi we came by steamer to Mumbai. I was along with some three, four people from Yazd. One was aged like my father, and he was our neighbour in Yazd, his son was there and another fellow was there of my age. It was a journey I will never forget. Ever. More tham one week of travelling.

Image: Kyani & Co., Dhobi Talao, 2007

So it was monsoon, and in Bombay it was raining, and raining, so many things which I was not used to! Day and night it was raining. That is why I was repenting! And the food! Indian food it is, what you call, hot food. But in our own restaurants we used to make the Iranian type of food.

When I arrived in Bombay I was repenting why I came - the Britishers had left and even at that time the hygienic conditions were not good. I thought Iran was better. I was new, I did not know language, no friends and all so I did not like it. Slowly, slowly I changed. The local people were friendly, good people. When they knew that I did not know the language, they used to talk more to me, and I picked up the language.

Image: Kyani & Co., Dhobi Talao, ca 1980

My father was here at Kyani, my son is the third generation that are running this restaurant, so this is a kind of family restaurant, established 1904 by my father Khodadad and his brother Khodamorad. Here then it was all Iranis working here. It was an institution, like Iranis, what you call it, it was like a training college!;they used to come and learn business, how to prepare, how to do business, and other things, and they used to go and make partnership with others and start their own business, set up their own Irani café.

In 1948 in Dhobi Talao Parsis were everywhere, Parsis and Christians. But, uh, slowly, slowly Parsis have migrated out of India, many of them died, many of them they did not get married, the population came down.

Image: Kyani & Co., Dhobi Talao, ca 1980

My father told me that the Iranis when they came here, they were working in the Parsi's houses, they were employed and worked in there, and uh, in the morning they used to meet, they would gather and discuss about life and things, so one fellow started preparing tea for the rest, but he used to charge them. So the idea of making tea came to the mind of the Iranis, so they started this tea business and all. By 1948, when I arrived, at every junction almost there was an Irani. They all selected those junctions, those street corners. Because the junctions are one, two, three sides of the road. Anything that was available they used to take.

Falooda - "..a gift from the Iranis to the people of India" says Aflatoon

Today our customers are a cosmopolitan mix - all types of people. Formerly it was mainly Christians and Parsis, the majority. But now, it is cosmopolitan. You cannot stop anybody entering your restaurant. It is a rule of the government, law. In those days you see, the customer was a different type of culture. Tie, coat and all. Hindus of high standard also used to come here. But majority were Parsis and Christians.

In years past Bombay was very safe and we used stop sometimes at 12 o’clock (midnight), but slowly, slowly we have reduced. Because at night people are in a different category in Bombay, they are different. People sometimes make trouble at night. So now we are closing it at 9 o’clock.

I think our regulars appreciate that we have stayed open, offering this type of service- we get people coming who were our customers some ten years back, fifteen years back, they have gone to America, or UK, Canada, then ten years later they come to Kyani, and they are so happy to see us, that we have maintained the same type of restaurant. I tell you, one year I went to America - there was a gathering - all Parsis, Iranis, and as soon as they saw me they said “ohh, Kyani, he has come from Kyani in Bombay”. I couldn’t believe it. Incredible how many people remembered Kyani.

Image: Badam, Butterscotch, Khari, Coconut Jam,Ginger, Cheese Wafers... - Kyani & Co., 2007

Changes? In about 1952 an Irani had a café, and this man used to put kus-kus (poppy) in the tea. And believe it or not, the taxiwallahs who were running the taxi, they used to go there and take their tea always, otherwise they were not happy with their tea. Then one by one, all the cafes started kus-kus tea, we had it here at Kyani, finally the Municipality came to know about it and they stopped it. It is prohibited. The Municipality will take your license and you have to go behind the bar if you tried that now. When Britishers were here, they were foreigners, we Iranis were also foreigners, we got friendly treatment when we went to the government departments; they knew that we were new here, we were also foreigners, so they said “you have to stop putting that in the tea”, and we did.

Image: Kyani & Co, 2007

In the past, people from offices, from Fountain, from Colaba, they used to come to Dhobi Talao, because there were two big shops selling confectionary – Bastani and Kyani - across the road from each other. Now there is only Kyani, so they go wherever they like to buy their requirements. Bastani closing has affected our business, you see. The nature of the business at Bastani was the same as Kyani. When it was there it was better. The movement of the people is now restricted. When Bastani was still there lots of people used to come from outside – they would maybe buy their sweets at one place, and just walk across the road and have their tea at the other.

Image: Bastani, Dhobi Talao, ca 1980

Kyani is now 103 years old, we are supposed to be the oldest Irani café still operating. We had to make my sons Farookh and Farad partners in the business; I am old now, any moment I may leave to go.

FROM an interview with Aflatoon Shokriye, Dhobi Talao, Mumbai, April 2007.

*Bombay to sonapur hai - Bombay is the city of gold.

Cafe De La Paix, Girgaum

Bun maska and chai at much more affordable rates than its Paris namesake

Did you know that we have a little Irani café at Girgaum whose name was inspired by the famous 1862 opened Café De La Paix (pronounced – pay) located at Place de l'Opéra in Paris and designed by architect Charles Garnier? The story goes that when the owner, Mr. Irani, opened this Girgaum café in 1932, the landlord of his building had just been to Paris and had been greatly impressed by the Café De La Paix there.

So he requested him to give this name to the Irani café he was opening. It is located at the corner of Avantikabai Gokhale Road, which has the bustling auto spare parts market. And don’t worry; our Café De La Paix will serve you bun maska and chai at much more affordable rates than its Paris namesake.

Abodh Aras

IMAGES, top to bottom:
Cafe De La Paix, Avantikabai Gokhale Road, Girgaum, 2007 - courtesy Abodh Aras
Cup of chai - courtesy Sandeep Paradkar

My B. MERWAN diary. .

My feet slowed down. My eyes went around. And everything for the next one hour happened in slow motion. It was as if I had walked through the doors of a time-machine. Straight into 1914.

It was a godforsaken overcast day in 2002. That was my second year in Bombay. Before that I had been writing for Gentleman magazine of the Indian Express newspaper. Through Gentleman I had known another writer/contributor and aspiring screenwriter, Rohit Gupta.

Rohit used to live in Grant Road in a rat infested rickety building in those days. And used to spend whole day at a place nearby that was his hangout joint and muse too. The place was B. Merwan. He said the name while we were walking to B. Merwan. The name gave me an impression that we were going to a persons house.

A few minutes later we entered B. Merwan.

My feet slowed down. My eyes went around. And everything for the next one hour happened in slow motion. It was as if I had walked through the doors of a time-machine. Straight into 1914 - the year B. Merwan was established. The feel. The ambience. I felt a sense of deja-vu. As if I was searching for a place like this all my life. As time went by I visited B. Merwan more and more, but alone. It was like falling in love with Rohit's beloved. So I had an affair with B. Merwan behind Rohit'a back. And B. Merwan loved me back with all that it had to offer. I sat there for hours - writing, thinking or just soaking in the place with my eyes.

For a long while it didn’t occur to me that there might be other Irani cafes around. There indeed were. In the years to come I ended up visiting a lot of them – Kyani, the late Café Johnson, Britannia, Regal Stores, Sassanian, Military, Oval, Leopold, Stadium, Lord Irwin, Brabourne, Mondegar, Universal. But B. Merwan remained my first love. Brabourne and Oval became close seconds.

On 3rd November 2005 armed with one handycam and two assistants I shot a short documentary on B.Merwan titled 'Brun.' On that day, while I was taking a break from the shoot Sourosh Nausheed Irani, one of the owners of B. Merwan told me this:

"I came here is 1984 from Iran. My grandfather and my father had opened this cafe in 1914. Till 1984 I was working in Iran - most of my youth days. I was there during Shah's time, then Khomeini's time. When the war broke out the family here got worried and called me back. Since then I am running this cafe with my elder cousin Bomi Irani.

We are the third generation running this cafe and fighting hard to keep the same old tradition going. The menu at the cafe has been same for 91 years while most of the other Irani cafes have given way to Chinese food or fast food etc. The chairs in this cafe are from Czechoslovakia and the marble top tables are from Italy. You don't get these at stores anymore.

We are trying very hard but we are growing old. We don't have a fourth generation to run this cafe. Both of us have daughters and it's not that we have anything against women running the place. It's just that after their marriage they have lives of their own."

Atul Sabharwal

IMAGES, top to bottom:
B. MERWAN, Grant Road, 2007
B.MERWAN - courtesy Atul Sabharwal
B.MERWAN signage - courtesy Atul Sabharwal
B.MERWAN, 2007

Gutli pao : YAZDANI Restaurant and Bakery, Fort

In the old days Irani bakers used to slice the loaf by hand - now that’s an art!; to cut parallel slices in a uniform size.
Zend Merwan Zend

Is there anything as delicious as a fresh, hard crusted gutlipao, perhaps, soaked in the gravy of a spicy curry? Gutlis, pao and a variety of other breads are made in large batches daily by the many bakeries scattered around Mumbai. These oven baked European breads made their appearance in Indian cuisine about three centuries ago. The very word pao, in fact, comes to us from the Portuguese, though there is a mistaken belief that the word derives from the feet (pao) that knead the dough!

To learn more, we sniffed the delectable aroma of fresh-baked bread that permeates Flora Fountain area and followed our noses till we reached Yazdani Bakery on Cowasji Patel Marg. We spent an enjoyable hour with the incredibly jovial Zend Merwan Zend, chatting about the history and traditions of bread in the city.

We learned that Zend’s grandfather, Zend Merwan



Abadan, came to Bombay at the turn of the century and set up a bakery near the Alexander cinema. “My grandmother Jerbanoo would get up at 3 o’clock in the morning to knead the dough with the khamir”, recounts Zend. “Khamir is the basic yeast ferment and the technique was brought from Iran where bread was made by the sour dough process and not with readymade yeast as is done today; a lump of the dough would be kept for fermenting the next day’s dough. The Iranis and Parsees knew how to leaven dough but they learned the technique of pan bread from the Portuguese who also taught us the use of hops in baking”.

“They probably used hops in bread because it prevents unwanted bacteria from impregnating the dough and spoiling it”, Zend surmises. “Nowhere in Europe do they use hops for bread making, so I don’t know

when and how they were introduced here. We had to boil two spoons of hops in water and we added it to the ferment when cool. When the bread was taken out of the oven, the whole area was filled with the sweet-sour smell of that bread which remained for days together without getting spoilt - it dried up but it was still edible.”

After his own father’s death, Zend’s father joined one of the oldest city bakeries at the age of eleven. This was the Rising Sun bakery at Golpitha presently owned by Shah Behram Sheriyar Irani. “They were famous”, says Zend. “Anton Pereira was their old Goan baker and they used to make seven-tiered cakes which were sent by P&O liners to Singapore and the Far East.”







“The bakery used to supply cakes and pastries from Colaba Military camp to Chembur Naka in a bullock cart. The bullock knew the journey so well that even if father fell asleep, the cart carried on and the bullock would stop near the shops where deliveries were to be made. My father knew each and every lane and all the bakers in Bombay. If the bullock collapsed, my father would pull the cart himself for some distance with the tired animal tied at the back!”

Today, at the bakery established by his father almost 50 years ago, Zend produces a wide variety of breads to cater to changing demands. The kneading process begins at 3 o’clock in the morning and the baking starts at 6 a.m. We sample some of his fresh, delicious and nutritious seven-grain bread, made from whole-wheat,barley maize, jowar,bajra, rye, andnachli or kang. He also bakes an array of cheese and garlic buns, chocolate bread, Swiss rolls, brown bread, whole-grain bread, pizza bread, sesame buns, hot dogs and of course, sliced sandwich bread and the ever-popular gutli and pao.

“The so-called ‘American’ bread that some people like these days contains at least five to seven different types of chemicals to make it soft and white and have a longer shelf life. How can you expect that bio-chemical mass to be digested by your system?”, he asks with disdain. “Bread must have a bite to it. In India we need bread which will maintain its structure when you dip it into gravies and sauces. Soft bread dipped in daal or tea would simply flop or disintegrate.”

We speak of flavour and aroma: “Because of the high demand for bread, modern bakeries do not ferment the dough by a bio-chemical process; the gluten matures with intense machinisation of the dough, whereas in our process of hand-kneading and slow machine kneading, the gluten takes at least 3 hours to mature and gets a chance of evolving alcohol and carbon dioxide, so the bread develops that typical sweet-sour flavour. Also, the skin of our bread is harder because we bake it for a longer time.”

Unsold bread at the end of the day is baked into toast. “The only people who appreciate this toast are Zoroastrian Iranis” says Zend with a smile. “During the days of persecution in Iran, they couldn’t afford to throw away anything and they broke up this dry noon (naan) or dry toast into small pieces, put them in a large bowl with salted curd, chopped onions and mint and pepper and it made a delicious breakfast. Today the toast is crumbled into papeta-ma-gosht and of course it’s excellent with tea.”

Sandwich bread: “In the old days Irani bakers used to slice the loaf by hand - that’s an art, to cut parallel slices in a uniform size.” Zend tells us aboutZend tells us about Kaikhushroo Irani of the Old Parisian Restaurant in Bruce Street who at the age of 65 can still expertly slice a loaf thinner than any machine. “He learned his trade at the age of 11 from Gustasp Irani of Naaz who introduced free-style wrestling to Bombay”.

“Most people today want sandwich bread”, says Zend, “but they don’t realise that you can make excellent sandwiches out of pao; cut it along the equator, spread it with butter, a bit of cheese or ham, close it up and bake it again, and have it with a cold beer. It’s simply heaven on earth!”

Sharada Dwivedi

This is an abridged version of an article originally published by Times of India, reproduced here courtesy of Sharada Dwivedi. With thanks, Sharada!

IMAGES, top to bottom:

Yazdani Restaurant and Bakery, Fort, 2007

Cup and bun, image courtesy Sandeep Paradkar

Bun Maska image courtesy Abodh Aras