Gourmet Files
Let’s go to the club
VASUNDHARA CHAUHAN
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Looking back on a simpler era when club food meant soup, roast lamb and caramel pudding ...
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Photo: S. Mahinsha
Cosy spaces: Ideal for a quiet lunch and conversation.
Mulligatawny soup, roast lamb and caramel pudding. That’s what club food used to mean. Now it’s all about tom yum soup, chana bhatura, chicken tikka and kulfi on a stick. I clearly remember the time when the menu was limited to Anglo-Indian, and access to the main hall — or, for that matter, the main club building — was denied to anything under 21. Now the qualifying age is 25, which suits me fine: screaming toddlers and adolescents with a ++ RH (raging hormone) factor should be neither seen nor heard. In any case to them a club means something quite different; certainly not a place to eat or have quiet conversations, much less read or swim.
My first memory of club food is of being allowed to order a snack after a swim. The choice was limited to fish fingers, cheese balls, potato wafers (or fingers) and chicken sandwiches, served with small earthenware tubs of tartar sauce and ketchup. The only permissible location was the “bar” at the poolside, and an adult had to sign for “baby”, who had to make a huge effort to get on to the high stools. It’s strange how for years I hated the appellation, and now that all the old bearers who used it are gone, I miss it. Then there came a time when my brother was old enough to sign vouchers and I wasn’t. For reason best known to him he only ordered what he liked: two plates of potato fingers and two Vimtos. I longed for the joy of dipping a potato wafer into ketchup and scooping up a little mound which I could then slowly lick off. The wafer eventually became soggy and began to taste of synthetic vinegar. But no, fingers chips it had to be. We agreed on the chicken sandwiches, though. They came as a paper-wrapped parcel, six triangles of fresh white bread filled with clean slivers of chicken, spiced with English mustard that went up one’s nose. Regardless of the dissection, they cannot be replicated at home.
Unique flavours
Vimto with its cough syrup flavour had absolutely nothing to commend it and, desperate to ape the Five Findouters’ style, I begged for ginger beer. “Now you want beer! Fine. Have a lemonade.” Which was lovely. The club had its own soda factory — overrun, as I discovered many years later, by cats. But the drinks were not only delicious, they were unique.
On winter Sundays there was lunch on the lawn and children were allowed. The parents ordered our lunch, met up with someone or the other and floated in and out of the club building. Our lunch was a cold collation. Russian salad with peas and carrots (yuck!), pink slices of salami, luncheon meat and ham. Cold bread rolls. I think I remember cold roast chicken. After a while someone would remember us and come back to ask if we wanted more, which we must have done.
Entirely predictable
Inside they ate Real Club Food. I eat it now and wonder whether all clubs have not only the same menu but the same cook. Soup, if it’s not mulligatawny, is cream of chicken, asparagus or almond. The mulligatawny tastes of sambhar powder, which it’s probably supposed to, and the rest of white sauce. Then the entrée: fried fish, mutton chops, chicken chops, which are some minced, crumbed, cutlet-like thing with a bone inserted, chicken stroganoff and my favourite, chicken À la Kiev. I am as fascinated now as I was then with the mechanics of making it: how do they get hot, liquid butter inside that crisp roll of chicken? No matter what you order, accompaniments don’t vary. Some limp coleslaw and boiled vegetables. The veggies are pretty but totally bland. Some trainee cook probably spends hours whittling potatoes and carrots into batons, each neatly turned as if on a lathe. There used to be only three desserts, and they’re still served: ice cream, trifle and caramel pudding. Even apple pie is a parvenu. Ice cream bricks are bought and sliced on to a plate; the trifle is sickeningly delicious with its layers of factory made cake and jam; and the caramel custard is totally homemade. It’s probably not the smoothest, the caramel sauce is a little thin and not quite dark enough, and the “silver” goblet it’s served in is tarnished. But it has an appeal which is not entirely nostalgic; it’s simply a made-in-heaven confection of eggs and sugar.
The lawn now has such a variety it can only be called a food court. Dosas, with all the paraphernalia of sambhar and chutney. Kathi kababs, lined with an omelette, dripping with grease and bursting with chicken tikkas. Curries: the usual rogan josh, methi chicken and kadahi paneer, dal makhani and tandoori rotis. Every conceivable kind of tandoori and pan-fried kabab, with green chutney and onion rings. Chinese stuff, Kashmiri. Apparently all this is made by outside caterers, contracted for a season’s trial. I might even have forgotten something. If the standing in queues is not a deterrent, some of them are really good — the Kashmiri stall’s haak and rista are authentic.
But there’s a resistance to the introduction of all this from old-timers, although I don’t think it’s because the food doesn’t appeal — it might simply be a touch of snobbery. As far as I’m concerned, they can bring in any cuisine they wish, as long as they continue to serve their chicken sandwiches…
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