Every once in a while, someone comes up to me and conspiratorially recommends what must by now be the worst-kept secret in South Delhi’s “offbeat” food scene — Khan Chacha’s kabab corner in Khan Market. Frankly, I find said place more than a tad over-rated — the kabab rolls tend …

I first read about The Metropolis in a rather eye-catchingly titled Rahul Verma article last year: “Manali in Paharganj”. And when the man himself recommended it as one of the best places for continental food, we wasted no time in organizing an EOiD community expedition to Paharganj.
I have taken several …

For reasons I myself cannot comprehend, I recently decided to take the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) NET exam, a cockeyed morally offensive mind-numbing scandal of a paper that deserves to be thrown out.
But on the plus side, it gave me the occasion to revise some of the basic concepts in …

(or, Fishing for Mallu Food at I. N. A. Market)
Vinayan and I have come a long way. About a decade ago, when our department acquired its first few computers and pretended to call the room they were dumped in a “lab”, I was an eager little graduate student there. I …

Once upon a time there ruled over twentieth-century Indraprastha, not one but two Ashoks, whose empire stretched as far as the eye could see, and their fame even beyond.
Okay, granted that the eye couldn’t see very far at all in twentieth-century Indraprastha, but you get the gist.
Every day when the …

Zero is not India’s greatest contribution to mankind, it’s the Manchurian. What, with all the jeera, dhaniya, and even garam masala it seems right from the heart of the Guangdong province, doesn’t it?
The Nepali kancha cooking chowmein in that pseudo-wok (essentially a kadhai) isn’t all that bad, I’ve realized. I’ve …

The Russians are a darling lot. They are apt to be disarmingly rude yet bashfully imperial, to drink like pigs, dance like oafs, have fond memories of their mothers humming to Raj Kapoor tunes, and love cooking just the way their grandmothers did.
Or so has been my experience from staying …