My Mastana Mystery -- or the Tikki Tragedy

Today as I was coming down the stairs to steal some of my mother's stir-fried cauliflower curry. I love that fresh, just-cooked taste of a firm but not tough piece of cauliflower. In that split second it reminded me of another dish starring the same vegetable: the famous Bombay Bistro Gobi Mastana.

There are a lot of stories I could tell you about the Bombay Bistro. There's that one where I went eating with a friend one night. The two of us bumped into what must have been the Indian Mafia of Jersey City, a bunch of men in suits surrounding a shrunken man in a white collar, making grim predictions about Taking Over the City. (All that they needed to do, it was said, was wait for Corzine to win.)

I've also taken out from this restaurant a million times and have eaten there a million and one times. For me it was the only accessible Indian restaurant for ages, until that role was usurped by a restaurant called Piquant.

Piquant is a very atypical Indian fusion restaurant that is also very dear to me. Bombay Bistro was more safe, by comparison, and carried the traditional Indian entrees: the Palak Paneer, Malai Kofta, Chicken Tikka Masala, the Naans, the very Yellow Aloo Paratha, and so on.

This restaurant, however, had two heartily bad-for-you brilliant entrees that could have been eaten as either appetizers or meals on their own. These were the entrees that I'd crave during the Rennaisance or that terrible class on Defense Policy that put me straight to sleep. I remember waking up from bed in the middle of the night and reheating one of these entrees in my flimsy dorm microwave. I woke up with the spice-scented drool on my pillow as the only evidence my having eaten it was not just a happy dream.

These entrees were what used to bring me to this restaurant at least twice a week at five o'clock, a half-hour before closing, and sit with a book, preferably one that didn't mention food so that the hydrochloric acid that did cartwheels in my belly wouldn't eat my stomach lining in despair.

They were hidden on the menu a little bit, shoved in between the appetizers and the main course and were called "the Specials". The description of the entrees, unlike most of the others on the menu, weren't forthcoming.

The first was called the Nawabi Aloo Tikki, and here is how it was described on the menu:

Spiced mashed potato patties topped with a special sauce.

Special sauce sounds a little silly to me, more than just generic but a parody of the ordinary and was an insult to this dish. This is how I would prefer to describe it:

Mashed potato patties flavored with coriander and cumin, drenched in a slow-cooked turmeric and chili-infused tomato cream sauce.

Even that description pales in comparison to what it was.


These Alu Tikkis -- potato patties -- would come out on a plate and melt at the touch of the fork. Then they were drenched in this tomato cream sauce concoction. I ate until my digestive tract threatened to sue me.

They got it right when they called it the "Nawabi" Aloo Tikki -- the dish was royal, creamy and heavy to the core, which is characteristic of high-class Indian Mughalai cooking. The rulers of these princely states were pretty keen on the Nothing But the Best issue, and you can see this present in their jewelry collections left on exhibition in the Hyderabad Salar Jung museum as well as in the Old City architecture around Charminar.

I have a very good friend named Rohan who, when times were easier and the two of us had much more time to sit around at eat at fine restaurants, ate out with me at various George Street establishments. (He is also a Hyderabadi and the type who appreciates things Nawabi and wonderful.) We were both connoiseurs of good food, pretending to take fake, high-brow reviews. We liked to pretend that we weren't students doing this with our part-time job money in Rohan's case and my parents' cash in mine.

I think it must have been the second or third time when we ventured to the Bombay Bistro and I showed off my ordering prowess by ordering him the Nawab Aloo tikki.

"This Chef-dude is due for the Nobel Prize," he proclaimed on first bite.

Bombay Bistro's chef -- or chef's consultant -- is actually an ex-chef of Indira Gandhi's who now consults at various Indian restaurants across the eastern seaboard. I don't know whether his genius had to do with these dishes but I like to think so. These dishes are so good because of their pedigree, which may or not be the case. It's nice to think about.

The second dish is even more worthy of my rhapsoding. It was called the Gobi Mastana, and this is how it was described on the menu:

"Steamed fresh cauliflower topped with special sauce"

Again, it's cooked in a special sauce, except not in the same special sauce as the Nawabi Aloo Tikki. The gobi was some of the best cauliflower I'd ever eaten. They say it's "steamed" on the menu, but I'd like to call that out as a lie. Rather, I think they put it in a deep fryer and left it there until just before it turned crispy, and then sauteed it in some minty-cream sauce concoction.

This minty sauce was something else. Again, what's the point of writing about it if it defies description? I'll try, but in order to boil it down to a real essence, I will have to try to find a working approximate recipe.

The sauce was a minty sauce with definite nutty hints, and it was creamy but tart at the same time, so while eating it I didn't feel the heaviness. The cauliflower had just the right amount of resistance against my teeth without feeling tough. I felt it while walking around on the street afterwards. There was a huge stone just sitting in my stomach, defying the digestive processes.

So I did some investigative reporting ie: I googled "Gobi Mastana Bombay Bistro".

I found a New York Times review of the the Bombay Bistro by Karla Cook (10/21/03), which can be found here. It didn't mention the Gobi Mastana, but it did discuss a dish called the Mushroom Mastana. Ms Cook had this to say:

"Other table favorites included the mushroom mastana, a dish of mushrooms stuffed with mashed potatoes flavored with garam masala and topped with a smooth sauce of mint, almond and cashew paste and watermelon seeds."

The sauce over the Gobi Mastana was minty, had some nuttiness to it. All that is missing from this description is the astringency, which probably has something to do with lemon juice. So I have some clues as to how this sauce was made. I'll have to recreate it.

I have some logistical issues.

My brother is allergic to nuts, so there is no way I can attempt this at home. I'll have to try this somewhere else -- at my own place, someday. These ingredients are a little out of what I carry at home from a day-to-day business. My family's herb of choice is coriander. We don't buy leaves otherwise, which is a real pity and when we do they're frozen.

I think I can figure this out, and when I can finally reproduce it, I can put a happy ending to a story which, so far, has ended in tragedy.



Here's the tragic ending:

The Bombay Bistro restaurant franchise was started by a set of constantly feuding brothers who could never agree on anything. Every now and then the staff would go through serious upheavals.

Then the day finally came: I ordered Gobi Mastana and all they gave me were sad cauliflower pakoras coated in mint chutney. It had none of the robustness and flavor is predecessor -- it was an embarrassed dish couldn't hide behind the fact it wasn't worth the $5.50 I'd paid for it. The Nawabi Aloo Tikki was also mauled beyond recognition.

Saddened, I left the restaurant and didn't return for a couple of days. When I walked past the restaurant posters were hung over the windows, blocking out what was going on inside. It wasn't for another week that I found out that everything went through, they were closed, and that really was the end.