Best Restaurants Great Cuisines I - Song Hay (Calcutta, India)

Tweet

It is one of the best restaurants serving no-frills Chinese in Calcutta yet very few of us know its name. It has been around for quite a long time now and unless you have been too, chances are you never heard about Song Hay in the midst of the noise and the hype. Not so of course, for the steady stream of office-folk, at day’s end, out from the grey mansions of Dalhousie and Bowbazar, from the pigeon holes of Esplanade and Central Avenue, the halls of Lyons Range, where many fortunes are made and many more go up in the diesel-smoked evenings of Calcutta.

They come quietly, even if they had been loud during the day and they usually remain quiet and dignified till it’s well past nine. I always love pushing through its heavy glass doors to escape from thankless summers, to meet someone, for good food and intoxication.

Song Hay welcomes everyone -- the modest interiors with the double pillars twined by dragons, the red Chinese lamps hanging from the pearl-colored ceiling, the calligraphic lettering of a light box, the little nooks and private spaces with tables, created so thoughtfully by the designer, have a delicate charm.   

What is it that makes a restaurant special? I have often wondered why run-down place like Olympia in Calcutta India is packed like a tin of sardines every evening while just across the street, waiters at another establishment wonder, where have all the customers gone. I have found no good reason why the loud and baroque United Coffee House in the heart of Delhi seems always short of seats while a few steps down, Volga laments for lost custom.

Talking about Volga, the dim-lit, red carpeted watering-hole has a sinister air that has struck my fancy (and I will write about the fantastic mutton cutlets here in this restaurants series someday) but not so for the average punter. 

So we really don’t have an answer, what makes an eatery, a relentless crowd-puller. I have given this some thought and when it comes to my favourite watering holes and hiding places I believe it’s the feeling of comfort, that a restaurant can give its customer, that’s most important. Of course then you have price, for I am talking of places where the average person can visit. Food comes somewhere in-between the two and service sometimes matter.

The food at Song Hay has a variety that very few similar places would offer. Then, they have most of the items available, and not just menu-fillers. The fare you get at Song Hay at that price is really a steal. Tasty, good-looking, generous portions and served in basic porcelain or stainless steel plates and bowls. My favorites at this Chinese restaurant are the pork dishes – the fiery Mongolian pork, the unforgettable pork-fried, or the simple and delicious pork chowmien.

Jayanta was asking the other day, `how could they make pork taste so delicious?’ Well, the meat of pigs is not considered particularly tasty by many, so I told him to find out from the kitchen.   

I have to warn you that I tried only a small selection from their quite extensive restaurant menu and am sure there are more discoveries waiting to be made. But if you are not in a hurry and happen to be in Waterloo Street of Calcutta, then dive into this pleasantly air-conditioned Chinese eatery with friendly waiters and ask for their `fried chicken’ and wash it down with a bottle or two of Carlsberg. If it’s still not evening, you know you would be getting a 10% discount on the bill, all the year round.

I usually drop into Song Hay well into the evening, usually with some friend or colleague and we quickly gravitate to our favoured corner and order the heavenly Double Happiness chow mien to go with quite a few rounds of dark rum – it’s always Old Monk. I don’t care for starters or finger food to go with my evening tipple and plunge straight into the heart of the menu of one of my favourite Chinese restaurants of Calcutta.

I haven’t been to Song Hay lately because of some unplanned distraction but will be there soon. At this time of the evening they would be having their tables full, the aroma of crispy chicken rising from the kitchen, wafting through the dining halls, twining around the tables and the smiling waiters (Michael, who looks like a rock star, is usually at our table) the dragons rolling their eyes, wondering at this crowd getting ever so excited about Double Happiness chow mien and thin ginger slices soaked in balsamic vinegar.

Top of the Song Hay restaurant menu: Double Happiness Chow Mien, American Chop Suey, Fried chicken, Pork Roast (dry)

Location: Waterloo Street, Calcutta (diagonally opposite to the old Great Eastern hotel)

Hearty meal for two with drinks: Rs 600

(Carlsberg beer image courtesy Wikipedia; Chopsuey image courtesy Spicy Dragon)

Bad Sex Gems and BL’s Deathless Legacy

Tweet

Norman Mailer won it in 2007 for a passage from A Castle in the Forest, that goes, `Are you all right?' she cried out as he lay beside her, his breath going in and out with a rasp that sounded as terrible as the last winds of their lost children.

'All right. Yes. No,' he said. Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni's death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. ...'

Last year's nominees include John Updike for dirty descriptions in The Widows of Eastwick and Paulo Coelho for a spirited passage in Brida. Updike quit the game sometime back and wouldn't be bothered whether they give him the `Bad Sex in Fiction Award' but gentle Paulo, could have a sermon or two for the red-blooded editors at Literary Review who run this heart-warming contest. His salacious bit consisted of footpath sex in Brida which is "the moment when Eve was reabsorbed into Adam's body and the two halves became Creation" and climaxes with the über-orgasmic, “As if struck by a sacred bolt of lightning, she unleashed them, and the world, the seagulls, the taste of salt, the hard earth, the smell of the sea, the clouds, all disappeared, and in their place appeared a vast gold light, which grew and grew until it touched the most distant star in the galaxy."

There are many more absurd, crude and downright funny passages written and rewarded each year a fine sampling of which is available at the Literary Review site. This year’s contenders for the bad sex award in fiction included Thomas Pynchon, Will Self and Mark Haddon better known for his `The Curious Incident of the Dog at the Night Time’. Iain Hollingshead, won the award this year, which according to the award’s founder is given out `with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.’ Read the passage that clinched it, for this first-time writer.

Talking of tongue-in-cheek awards, awards that chastise or ones that poke fun, who can ignore Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s lasting legacy. This 19^th century Englishman began his novel Paul Clifford with the momentous (and much abused),

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, each year, invites people to `compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.’ Started in 1982, the contest now attracts thousands of entries in a number of categories, all striving to keep alive the legacy of this Englishman with the strange surname. Anyone can enter the contest electronically or otherwise.

This year the prize was won by a 55-year old writer, David McKenzie for composing this:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

The winner for the detective fiction category, appeals even more with this horrendously amusing,

``She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.”

Lytton’s great-great-great-grandson is however not amused by the increasing popularity of the prize and recently threw a challenge to its founders for maligning his ancestor’s name. He said, "to have been the first person to have penned a cliché was a mark of genius". In fact, other than `dark and stormy night’ Bulwer-Lytton had created many over-abused marvels like, "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "the almighty dollar”. This Guardian article has followed this debate.

From the Ig Nobel Prize to the Razzies, there are a whole lot of chastising, tongue-in-cheek or downright bitchy honours given out each year. Just reading about them and could make a dull weekend exciting. The Wikipedia list for Ironic and humorous awards is a good starting point.

To top it off, with a bit more from the Bad Sex Awards, here is an entry that makes one laugh with its mock-profundity. This is from a novel called Will by Christopher Rush:

``O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise. Let me sing the black banner, the blackbird's wing, the chink, the cleft, the keyhole in the door. The fig, the fanny, the cranny, the quim - I'd come close to it now, this sudden blush, this ancient avenue, the end of all odysseys and epic aim of life, pulling at my prick now, pulling like a lodestone …’’

And this gem from Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart (Granta),

"You wanna pop me?" she said. This must have been some new-fangled youth term. The verb "to pop."

"I wanna bust a nut inside you, shorty," I said. "I wanna make you sweat, boo. Let's do this thing."

Bulwer-Lytton image courtesy thedandy.org

Norman Mailer image courtesy Wikipedia