How many memories can a 5x5 inch lump of milk, egg yolk, cream, sugar, bread and cardamom hold?
Several, if you were lucky to have grown up in Mumbai before tarts, macaroons and cupcakes invaded the stores.
The stodgy bread pudding, Mumbai's cosmopolitan dessert, packs in memories of the sweet aroma wafting through modest hostel dining halls post-lunch, and walking out of a matinee show straight into a dingy SoBo snack joint to order a gooey burnt sugar-coated chunk.
It's not clear how the bread pudding became an important part of the Mumbai dessert culture. The reticent owners of the city's Irani cafes aren't willing to admit it has anything to do with the colonisers, although the stomach-filler often finds a mention in Britain's rich culinary tradition.
What's certain is that the bread pudding is a fast fading dessert. Here's why and where you should grab a bite as long as the city's dozen Irani joints still make them.
Cafe Excelsior, VT
The 93-year-old cafe run by Ardeshir Mazkoori is open seven days a week from 7 am to 11 pm. The pudding here is moist, light, comforting and bland in an oddly delicious way. It's something you can start your day with, over a cup of chai, and end your night with, too. Ask Nityanand, who mans the ready-to-eats counter, what the secret behind their pudding is, and he says it's the measure of ingredients. That's a secret Mazkoori's grandfather passed onto to cook Ali. Demand, says Nityanand, hasn't slipped a bit. Marathi theatre personalities, politicians and students still ask for it. "Sometimes, they eat two slices at a go!" he says.
Yazdani Bakery, Fort
The bakery that's been standing for 51 years on Cowasji Jehangir Street offers multiple temptations. Hand-painted boards promise freshly baked bread, apple pie and the best Shrewsbury biscuits in town. Aluminium trays stacked with pudding carry what we discovered was melt-in-themouth pudding. Part of the appeal of Yazdani's pudding lies in its simplicity. If anything bought off the counter in a plastic wrapper had to classify as comforting, it would have to be this.
Stadium restaurant, Churchgate Station
On a table opposite ours, four old men bent over a single chunk of the bread pudding, relishing every spoonful. We called for a slice and the staff was honest enough to say that day's portion was "overcooked". We went ahead and placed an order anyway. What arrived at the table was yellow, nottoo-sweet, dense crusty goodness. The demand, said the waiter, had slipped over the years. They now make just two trays a day. That's 48 pieces of pleasure, daily.
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