Instagram Post 3/24-26/2020
We journeyed to the far east – the far east of Queens, that is, a stone’s throw from Nassau County – to explore a South Asian neighborhood familiar to my dining pals but relatively new to me (my way of saying I’ll be back soon). One destination was Mumbai Xpress, a vegetarian restaurant at 256-05 Hillside Avenue in Floral Park with over 100 snackish items on the menu, so this post just scratches the surface.
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
My favorite of the day was this Tokri Chaat (aka katori chaat). Glossary: chaat is an Indian snack featuring crispy fried dough, potatoes, onions and other veggies, yogurt, chutneys, herbs and spices but the number of variations is legion; tokri means basket, katori means bowl. In this case, the basket is made from fried shredded potatoes…
…laden with cubed boiled potatoes, mung beans, tomato, chickpeas, sev (crunchy chickpea flour noodles) all swimming in the aforementioned savory nectar of deliciousness.
Our destination in part involved sampling some of the many sandwiches on offer. There are countless delicious breads indigenous to India, but these two carbobombs borrow heavily from their American counterparts.
The first comes from the Breach Candy Special Sandwiches section of the menu – Breach Candy is a posh neighborhood in South Mumbai. To my eyes, the triple decker Mumbai Grilled Sandwich would appear to be India’s answer to the Dagwood Sandwich, at least in terms of architecture. Standard issue potato chips.
The top layer consisted of green pepper and red onion; the bottom, sliced boiled potato; melted Amul cheese, a pasteurized processed cheddar product, and coriander chutney all around. I opined that the bread-to-filling ratio seemed out of proportion, but my expert guide and sandwich stacker who has first-hand experience with the real deal assured me that on the streets of Mumbai, sauces are applied more liberally so we took matters into our own hands. Don’t know if Dagwood had such problems.
This Mumbai Vada Pav (pronounced pow) from the Mumbai Xpress Specials section of the menu is a fried potato patty with a bit of red onion for kick, covered with tamarind and coriander chutneys and sprinkled with spiced garlic masala served on a burger bun. Total starcho if you’re into that sort of thing.
This is muthiya (rhymes with shukriya, a Hindi word for thank you – sorry, I couldn’t resist). A Gujarati treat, these pillowy little dumplings are made from grated bottle gourd and onion mixed with seasoned flour, steamed and then sautéed with mustard seeds and sesame seeds. Topped with chutneys, they weren’t bad.
As I said, I’ll do a return visit to this neighborhood. And I don’t even need a passport!
(*All right, all right! It’s moo-TEE-ah.)