Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

Welcome, Bach!
Nita Ambani extends a warm welcome to the chairman of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport on Friday.

Sorry chef, strictly b#!f for us
There is a lesson we learnt today at the expense of celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor - you don't mess with Malayalis when it comes to their beef-eating habits. Kapoor had posted a recipe for, of all things, Malabari paneer on his Twitter account.

And the community's response can be summed up with one of the replies: "Sir, I'm a Malabari. What is paneer?" People had a gala time trolling the chef, with some rather innovative dishes being thrown up as suggestions for the future. These included Iyer pork vindaloo, Chinese idli and Bengali thepla, with minced beef dhokla being our favourite.

Bambaiyya-style makeover
"We wanted to do something fun and different in the afternoons. Plus create a VFM option for Bambaiyya food, which is lacking in these parts," says Meldan D'Cunha (right), about the revamp of his SoBo watering hole, The Local. D'Cunha who was instrumental behind the popular Goan eatery Soul Fry in Bandra, is planning to transform the bar into a restaurant by day.

A typical night at the SoBo hangout

One of the first neighbourhood bars to serve reasonably priced alcohol, the remodelled avatar, which whould take off in early May, will see a no-frills restaurant where patrons can tuck into city favourites like Malvani prawns fry, Chicken Sanju baba and khada masala kheema.

Fans of their bar menu need not worry, assures D'Cunha. Favourites along with popular Indian cocktails will be available. Their karaoke and VJ nights will continue as well. Let's hope it scripts a new chapter in SoBo's already overcrowded F&B scene.

My word, Tharoor!
After farrago and rodomontade, India's very own wizard of words, parliamentarian and author Shashi Tharoor, is back with a new one that's become a talking point in the Twitter universe.

Here's the most recent addition: Roorback: A defamatory falsehood published for political effect. The articulate Tharoor even helped us with a sentence where he applied the word - 'I've had to put up with a lot of roorbacks in the last few years!' Now, we'd like to see how many wordsmiths can dare to flaunt it across social media.

A designer touch to Earth Day
Fashion designer Anita Dongre is known not just for dressing political and international royalty but also for her eco friendly initiatives, be it her sustainable label or her ergonomically designed Rabale headquarters. And we hear that on the occasion of Earth Day, anyone can drop by at her couture stores, today and tomorrow, and can request for a sapling to be planted in their name.

In return, they will get a certificate for the same and these trees will be planted at a plantation adopted in the Bassi wildlife sanctuary, located in the southern part of the Aravallis in Chittorgarh district in Rajasthan. The area happens to be her muse and home state. A green thought indeed.

Donald the stray at the workshop

Bow wows with Jerry Pinto
It turned out to be one helluva doggie-happy afternoon at Trilogy in Lower Parel. Children's author Jerry Pinto regaled little minds at a workshop for The Welfare of Stray Dogs where they spun stories about Mumbai's street dogs. He also read stories about these strays from a just-launched book, My City, My Dogs by WSD CEO, Abodh Aras.

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