French Toast Recipe

I must now provide a cooking interlude to all of this restaurant posting to give you my personal favorite, easy-to-make, ultimate tasting French toast recipe. It is very simple to try at home, and if morning time is short, especially on school days, you can prepare the batter the night before and just fry the bread in the morning. Anyways, here it is:

Ingredients:

4 eggs

2 1/2 tbsp sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup whole milk

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

12 thick slices (local pav in halves works well) of bread

Instructions:

1. Beat the eggs, sugar, salt, milk, and vanilla in a shallow dish (I like to use a low and wide bowl).

2. Once you have prepared the mixture, either put it in the fridge if you are going to make the actual French toast the next day, or soak the bread in it if you are making it for now. I like to give the bread an extra long soak before frying it because if you cook it right, there will still be some of the batter left inside of the bread when you eat it, and will make a soft and gooey component to the flavorful bread.

3. Heat butter on the pan over medium high heat.

4. Fry each slice of bread in the pan until there is a slightly golden-brown color to both sides (flip the slice half way through).

5. Take the bread once it's ready out of the pan and sprinkle each slice with a small spoonful (it depends on what kind of bread you are using) of cinnamon sugar - make the cinnamon sugar by mixing cinnamon powder with sugar.

Enjoy!

Ray's Café and Pizzeria

This place is by far a hidden gem. No - scratch that - this place is a hidden diamond reflecting precious silver light just ready to be mined. It is right next to/inside Nature's Basket (one of the reasons why Ray's is good - it has access to imported goods), and if you go just a bit left to the door of it you will find a path that will take you around the side of the shop and into a nice little cozy area with an inside and outside place to eat - Ray's Café. I must say - out of living here for 5 years - this restaurant has the best pizza, specifically pepperoni pizza, I have ever had in Mumbai. Yes, it is better than Jazz By The Bay. Yes, it is MUCH better than California Pizza Kitchen. It is pure gold. The inside of Ray's feels very new and clean, and is a pleasant and relaxing place to dine in. The pepperoni pizza, called the Ray's Special pizza, comes in a choice of three sizes - 6 in, 12 in, or 16 in. When I go there, I order to 12 in to feed myself - so you might wanna get your sizes straight before you order. The service is quite reasonable, and for the pizza that you are getting, so are the prices (though you will find this pizza to be on the more costly size of pizza in Mumbai). Plus, the inside is set up so that there is a counter at the end of the room, in which behind it there are a couple guys hand-making the pizzas with care (and they are fine with people taking pictures - I would recommend doing so). The Ray's Special is constructed with real, delicious, mozzarella cheese. That's right, I said it - REAL CHEESE. MADE FOR PIZZA'S. And it taste's so, so, so very good. The crust is a mix between a thin crust and a thick crust, but it more leaning towards being a thin crust. It also has a crisp, fresh taste to it, and is wonderful. And I haven't even gotten to the pepperoni yet. The pepperoni is the best I have every tasted within a restaurant in Mumbai (I can see how being next to Nature's Basket relates to this). They are big, juicy, yum-yum-elicious slices that generously cover each slice of delectable pizza. My mom came with me on this expedition, and ordered a Med Salad. I tried it, and it was actually very good - it had certain dried fruits, such as some raisin-like things (it's hard to remember), with some fresh greens and other little treats hidden in there for you. All in all, a trip to Ray's for a nice Sunday (or why not any day!) lunch is a must-go-to, and I know that I'll be making that a regular place of mine too.

Mia Cucina

This place that I'm going to write about is a great little restaurant in the midst of Bandra, called Mia Cucina. It is a delicious Italian place with great food, some tasty treats, and the perfect place for some nice dining. Their pizzas are what I would call "calderlicious", meaning that if Calder thinks it's amazing, then most probably you will too :). It is reasonably priced, thin crust, well made classic Italian pizza, and is completely worth the 350 rupees that are needed to pay for a beautiful hand-made pepperoni pizza - next to a good ole Papa John's, it would pretty much strike close to first in a place like Mumbai. The appetizers are definitely worth trying also, as the calamari is an absolute win and is worth going to the place just for that alone. There is something for everybody: deserts for the sweet-tooths; salty snacks for the savory eaters; filling main courses for the hearty devourers. You can't beat it - which means you'll just have to try it.

Jai Jawan

I just went to this amazing place set in the midst of the Mumbai buzz - Jai Jawan. The one I am talking about is (what I would call) "the real one" - meaning the one off the side of the street with no chairs, a metal counter with the capacity of maybe (maybe) five people. The thing to get there is the prawns, sold by the kilo, and they are just absolutely stomach numbing. Basically, they make you want to eat them, stuff yourself brainless, then throw up a little to empty out the "ole tummy" just so you can repeat the process. I mean, I thought I wanted more after chowing my tandoori chicken and fried rawas and prawns. But really, what you are getting is a choice of four things on the menu - fried prawns (I would say the second best in Mumbai - first goes to Leopold's butter pepper garlic prawns - but I'll get to that later), fried rawas, tandoori chicken, and chicken tikka. All I would say are top notch - just seeing the huge 2 foot by 2 foot bucket of prawns (with the AMAZING masala-y covering), and then watching the "master fryer" plop those in the deep fry is enough to make you want to eat the guy taking orders at the front. It opens at 6:30, but, like what happened to me, expect to wait for thirty or so minutes, because apparently, "6:30" means "7:00" in the busy world of the shoe market street by KFC and Croma. I would say that Jai Jawan is a great place to stop for a quick bite or a take away order of 10 or so kilos of pure goodness - I know I'm gonna stop by for seconds.

Elco

You haven't eaten Indian food if you haven't tried Elco. Luckily, I have the pleasure of being a two minute walk away from this mind-blowing pure-veg South Indian restaurant (set in Bandra West), and I'm very gracious that I have this privilege. The kind of food that you will find here is stuff like dosas (the best in Mumbai), pani puri (again-amazing), and several other kinds of delicious morsels that you will slowly discover as you begin to make Elco one of your regular stops (highly recommended). My favorite thing to get there is pav bhaji, which I would consider a ten out of ten OUTSTANDING meal. The perfect size (though I would definitely recommend getting at least one order of "extra bread"), and it won't stuff you yet will not leave you hungry. The buttery sauce made from the kitchen à la heaven, makes you rethink your past years as a desperate searcher for good Indian food - basically, it means all the years you wasted by settling for average and not going for the gold (or shall I say "platinum" in this case), and how by even reading this blog post you are spending precious time which could be taken up by devouring tasty chaat treats from Mumbai's finest. So get on it!

Moti Mahal's

This restaurant, called Moti Mahal's, is a once in a lifetime find for a local place in Bandra (Mumbai, India), that serves absolutely amazing North Indian food, especially meat. If you are a die-hard meat-lover searching for a great outing that serves the best North Indian barbeque in Mumbai, according to my point of view, you would no doubt go to Moti Mahal's. The automatic order that my father and I immediately place is one special kebab platter - a plate filled with an array of meats that will tickle your taste buds - and one dahl pocari (THE BEST - a darkish brown/black mixture of some type of bean - a delicious and radiant flavor), along with an order of roomali roti (a paper-thin roti - great for wrapping meats with) and two orders of garlic naan (to die for, as usual). And, to finish off the meal, an extra meat or dalh dish is ordered - and is pretty much always something new (and almost always magnificent - something to expect from the food served at Moti's). And that my friends, will present the two of us a belly-filling, not-being-able-to-fall-asleep-on-your-stomach-because-you-are-so-incredibly-stuffed meal that will give us memories throughout the night as we dream about reshmi kabab in all it's glory.