Behind my engineering college, the Don Bosco Institute of Technology, in Vidyavihar, Mumbai , the Anil Wine N Dine is an emotional fulcrum. It was the place where fellow Boscoites would drown their sweet sorrows after a love lost or an exam failed. Equally, it was also the space for celebrations.
The external examiner didn’t call your bluff during a viva? A treat at Anil lasting into the wee hours of the morning was the obvious next step. For as long as my college has existed, Anil Wine N Dine—with its booze, diarrhoea-inducing schezwan chutney and greasy chicken lollipops—has been the collective glue that has held it all together for all the Boscoites. Chef Niyati Rao seeks to tap precisely into this world of dive bars—the seedy ones that exist behind engineering colleges like mine, along state highways and in narrow alleyways with colourful signboards.
Rao has elevated the idea of a dive bar through a refined spin in her new venture Bombay Daak which opened in Bandra West this week. For more than a year, Rao and her team of chefs travelled to the dive bars of Amritsar, Shillong, Mumbai and more with the sole purpose of gathering stories. “Ram Mohan, whom I spoke with via my aunt in Kerala, told me that back in the day, he would mix rum with Gold Spot (a soft drink introduced by Parle in 1952) because rum tasted better when mixed with a citrusy drink,” says chef Rao, leafing through her black diary where all these stories are scribbled, mathematically juxtaposed .