Anyone with a penchant for seafood in Mumbai will remember Bharat ExcellenSea — a hole in the wall restaurant crouched in Ballard Estate with truly excellent fish and seafood at prices that didn’t dent the wallet. This seafood institution from the ’80s has now undergone a major refurbishment. Gone are the absurdly low beams that knocked your head and the tightly packed tables. In its place is a bright and cheerful dining hall decked up with natural fabrics, muted tones and floor to ceiling windows. A steep set of stairs take you upstairs where you can get a ringside view of the culinary drama. But the biggest change is the person manning the kitchen — Ananda Solomon.
Chef Solomon is an industry veteran who gave Mumbai its first real Thai restaurant (Thai Pavilion at Taj's President, Mumbai IHCL SeleQtions). He was also the man behind Mumbai’s earliest and finest coffee shop Trattoria and Konkan Café that served food from Mumbai right up to Karnataka. The culinary superstar has energised the menu at Bharat ExcellenSea bringing his finesse to the staples along with his wizardry in Thai cuisine.
What’s new and what remains
Bharat ExcellenSea was always known as an unpretentious Mangalurean restaurant. Lacy neer dosa, luscious gassi (coconut-based gravies), vigorously spiced ghee roast, peppery mutton sukke and soulful surmai tawa fry ruled the menu. While these hero dishes continue to seduce and sizzle on the menu, Solomon brings an added note of craft, surprise and restraint — the mark of seasoned, serious chefs. Take the quintessential gassi for instance. Solomon makes the gassi a day prior with the fish bones tied in a cloth and left in the gassi. The next day he pulls out the bones, dunks the marinated fish in the gassi and serves it. “I don’t believe in fusion food — mixing and matching and creating something that doesn’t exist. I do classic food. And if you do classic food and present it in the right way, today’s generation will love it,” says Ananda Solomon, CEO and executive chef, Bharat ExcellenSea.
The chef has also pushed the culinary boundaries to include dishes from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and even Thailand. So an outrageously delicious meen pollichattu, plump, golden fried bombil and robustly peppered kori sukhe sit comfortably beside delicious crab cakes and hypnotically creamy baked prawns. This is cooking that spikes endorphins! Delightful meal endings which include creamy elaneer payasam (tender coconut pudding) and the refreshingly cold Tub Tim Grob (water chestnut in coconut milk) feel like a reassuring hug.
Of course, the iconic Butter Garlic Crab still rules the roost. Interestingly it was this very same restaurant that introduced the concept of live crabs brought to the table. But people didn’t take to the crustaceans with giddy, sloppy abandon. “When I first introduced live crabs at the restaurant in the ’90s people were very reluctant. They loved to see the crab but no one wanted to eat them. It remained a show piece in the glass jar. It took almost an entire year for people to get used to the concept and order the live crabs,” says Suraj Salian, managing director, Bharat ExcellenSea.
These days people donning an apron and getting down and dirty extracting the buttery crab meat is a common sight at most seafood restaurants in the city.
Back in the days
When Bharat ExcellenSea launched on May 10, 1989 the culinary landscape in Mumbai was heavily focussed on red meat and chicken. A restaurant specialising in fresh seafood served with hot off-the-tawa neer dosa (something only the Mangalurean homes made) along with giant masala smothered surmai slices (king fish) was a novelty and quickly became a roaring success.
Salian remembers going to Sassoon docks every single day at 4 am to grab hold of the kapri pomfrets (a superior variant of pomfret) before they were sold to exporters. Recipes were tightly guarded and the masalas were sourced from their origins. Salian would personally supervise the dry roasting of the spices for the gassi (he insists they have to be slow roasted on dim flame) and even tend to customers.
“A slice of pomfret tawa fry used to be priced at Rs 7 while the rice cost Rs 1.25 paisa. During those days an entire meal would cost not more than Rs 10-12,” remembers Salian.
Decadence done right
Seasonality, freshness and authenticity still remain the cornerstones of this three decade old restaurant. While the seafood is sourced locally and at times from Malpe in Karnataka when the Mumbai docks are closed, spices are brought from Kerala and coconuts are ferried in a bus every day from Mangaluru.
“I want to change the perception that Indian food is ’average food.’ It’s not. There is so much variety to our cuisine — right from our temple food to saadya and even the pickles. We just have to present out classics in a way that looks Western but is Indian at heart.
There is no need to get all excited about French food here,” says Solomon who is also shining a spotlight on regional vegetarian dishes such as phansachi bhaji (raw jackfruit subzi), val (lima beans), malabar spinach upkari and thaute pulimunchi (cucumber in a spicy tamarind gravy).
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