Word: kohinoor
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With the warmth of an endearingly eccentric relative, 86-year-old Boman Kohinoor of Britannia Restaurant, tel: (91-22) 2261 5264, in south Mumbai, exclaims, "You must try the berry pulav, which my wife introduced in 1982 after returning from a trip to Iran." A waiter appears moments later with saffron golden rice and tender chunks of curried potatoes, fried cashews, wisps of crispy onions and ruby-red barberries imported from Tehran. "In Iran, the food is dry and bland by Indian standards so my wife experimented to find the right spices to liven up the dish," says Kohinoor...
...Kohinoor's head chef, his son Romin, prepares other Britannia favorites such as sali boti (succulent cubes of mutton marinated in garlic-ginger paste, covered in a sweet cinnamon gravy, and sprinkled with crispy matchstick potatoes) and patrani machii (pomfret seasoned with coconut chutney and steamed in banana leaves). (See pictures of Mumbai's entrepreneurs...
Britannia - founded in 1923 by Kohinoor's father, Rashid - is part of a dying breed of family restaurants run by Mumbai's rapidly dwindling Zoroastrian, or Parsi, community. "Fifty years ago, there used to be around 500 Parsi restaurants along the stretch of south Bombay; now there are hardly 15 left," says Kohinoor, who doubts his own restaurant will survive...
...simmering pulses and grains in sugary ghee. It is traditionally eaten to celebrate seven months of a pregnancy, but the declining number of Parsi births means that nowadays members of the community simply enjoy the dessert whenever they please. "Parsis will go extinct, but not the Parsi food," says Kohinoor. "Everyone loves the taste...
...Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten records a joke about the Lipshitz Curse: a blond at a charity ball is wearing an enormous diamond. She boasts that there are three great diamonds in the world-the Hope, the Kohinoor and her own, the Lipshitz. But, unfortunately, she tells her friends, with the Lipshitz diamond comes the Lipshitz Curse. "The Lipshitz Curse? What is the Lipshitz Curse?" The blond sighs: "Lipshitz...