FOOD TALK
Better when rude
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`To make things even more agreeable, Sanghvi has carefully sieved and sifted his pieces so that like a buffet you can decide whether you want to eat Indian, or go truffle hunting, or wallow in a great sweet and sticky pudding of childhood nostalgia.'
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THE effect is a bit like one of the author's own recipe for Thai Salad dressing — sweet-sour with lashings of chilli that leave you slightly burnt but begging for more.
It's typical of Vir Sanghvi's style that he should collar the reader in his introduction and harangue him or her on how exactly the book should be read and digested. Before you can even take the trouble, he's pointed out the drawbacks of pickling one's own newspaper and magazine columns into a single bottle, but explains why he's done it, nonetheless.
He's made sure that you won't mistake him for another Michael Winner, the celebrity food writer for the Sunday Times who presses more flesh than food and the more stodgy Indian variations like him, (his terminology is much more pungent) and given you helpful hints on how you should ideally proceed with the work. In small dive and peck doses, rather than a day-by-day read through. To make things even more agreeable, Sanghvi has carefully sieved and sifted his pieces so that like a buffet you can decide whether you want to eat Indian, or go truffle hunting, or wallow in a great sweet and sticky pudding of childhood nostalgia. Ummm, you whisper, thank you, thank you, Vir, for conjuring up the soggy secret delights of your childhood, so that they now seem like mine.
A confession
I have to admit to a bias at this point. I had not only read, but also enjoyed, the columns that appeared under the title of "Grand Frommage" in the Hindustan Times. To make a really embarrassing confession, I had even felt inspired on one occasion to write one of those fan letters that overwhelm female readers from time to time to "Dear Grand Frommage" and extol the virtues of his knowledge and his style. Imagine my horror then to realise on reading the introduction to the book that the "Grand Frommage" was none other than the Saturnine Vir Sanghvi.
In case you doubt my word just take a look at his portrait on the cover. He seems to be sitting in front a bar that is on fire, the orange glow from the nearby flames appear to be licking up his face and chest, while he stares into the camera in a black shirt, with the look that was made famous by the actress Theda Bara: the "come hither and let me gobble you up" look. Of course, he tells you in his introduction that he's holding his stomach in and hence the look of intense concentration. Also, it's not unreasonable in a food writer to want to eat up everything that comes in his or her way, but what makes Sanghvi so scary is that it's not his fondness for food that makes him so famous.
Food fetishes
He's been Numero Uno amongst his generation of journalists for so long that even now it's truly daunting to contemplate his rise from being an editor of Bombay at the age of 22, to being editor of Sunday at 30 and editor of the Hindustan Times, till very recently, where he is still an editorial director, as well as being the anchor of a very popular television programme. He regularly makes a splash on the Page Three items when he's not being called upon to judge various fashion and food related events. So are you left completely gob-smacked that he's not only found time to eat in some of the best places in the world, along with some of the famous names in the business but he's managed to write about it, with so much style and zest, that frankly, it makes you feel ill. Not just that, he even managed to throw in a couple of recipes now and then, which re-enforces the idea that he's a dab hand at rustling up a sandwich here and a risotto there, while bringing on the truffle oil, or talking eloquently about what a few shavings of white truffles can do to your omelettes, if not your libido.
Having tearfully parted with my own favourite image of the writer of the "Grand Frommage" columns as a kindly Bengali Uncle with a flowing paunch and a bagful of food stories, (who else would know about "The Unsung Nizam's Roll" from Kolkata?) I began to feel oppressed by Sanghvi's tendency to show off some of his favourite food fetishes. In the section labeled "The Good Life", Sanghvi behaves like a real Caviar Cad and then goes on to lecture the peasants on what to look for in buying or eating truffles, foie gras, should the salmon be smoked or not and which wine is okay on his list of throat lozenges and which combinations should be avoided. In some of these columns he seems excessively familiar with the bouquet of liquid produced by the urinary tract of felines, one hates to use his own phrase, though it provides a nice alliterative adjunct to pussy cat and compares this to the wines that according to him are served on certain airlines, particularly Air India.
Plain talking
He also takes recourse to cheap gibes meant to give vegetarians a jolt, such as describing how the gelatine in jello is made and why tomato soup, or various types of Chinese dishes, or biryanis so often taste better in a restaurant than at home, but as he says it is a book called Rude Food and you have to be prepared for some plain talking.
If however, you can get over this tendency to flaunt his own taste buds like a gastronomic variation of Naomi Campbell walking the ramp, Sanghvi is so deliciously camp that you become quite addicted to him.
Having enjoyed many of the great food moments that he describes during his sojourn in Mumbai, I could feel all the pleasure of sitting once more at the Taj's incomparable (in those days) Sea Lounge, spooning into a glass goblet of their coffee ice-cream, or Viennoise, lapping up his tales of schoolboy greed in swapping Cads (Cadbury Chocolates) and listening to the great food myths that he extracts from chefs like Nelson Wang, the originator in this account of the mythical dish from a mythical place, Manchurian Chicken.
The Sanghvi mystique
True, he does not seem much inclined to peer in the direction of the South aside for some cursory remarks on idlis, dosas and medu vadais and certainly he's more at home on the Five-Star circuit, though he's always at pains to tell you how he's trotted through all the markets and food stalls of South Asia and some parts of China. Equally, when towards the end he bungs in a recipe for Chili Con Carne and breaks down to confess that his favourite pudding is "Bread and Butter Pudding" you begin to doubt his credentials as a serious foodie, but that's also part of the Sanghvi mystique.
He's a first class snob who persuades you that the best snobs in the world are those who are so secure they can afford to be vulgar. There's no a dull page in the book and most of it is so good, it sizzles.
Rude Food, Vir Sanghvi. Penguin, p. 333, Rs. 375.
GEETA DOCTOR
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