KUALA LUMPUR, April 13 — In a lackadaisical dining landscape crowded with cafes serving all-day brunch menus, it is refreshing to discover The Ganga Cafe. Hidden in Taman Weng Lock, Bangsar, this no-frills place serves Northern Indian vegetarian fare cooked with a lot of heart. Owners Prabodh K. Sheth, 51 and his wife, Meeta, 44, are newcomers to the city’s restaurant scene but their delicious fare coupled with their personalised service is making a deep impression with diners.
A devoted vegetarian, Meeta works her magic in the kitchen to produce Indian vegetarian dishes that are drawing the crowds. As the fourth child in a family of five girls in India, she was not culinary inclined. “Cooking did not take place when I was small.”
It was only after she married Prabodh that she honed her cooking skills under the tutelage of her mother-in-law. “As my husband loved certain kinds of food, the interest took place and I started to make the stuff myself,” she adds.
The talented chef would often watch others cook and improvise on the dish. “If you are cooking something, I’ll observe and cook it in my own style and creativity to improve it.”
In 2011, she started a vegetarian catering business. It was called Me.Nu Caterers — a name coined by her son, where “me” stood for Meeta and “nu” for her partner, Renu. Moving towards a restaurant business was a natural progression but it was through sheer luck that Prabodh, who runs his own IT consultancy company, discovered the opportunity.
The previous owners of the cafe wanted to dispose of the cafe with a tricky condition: keeping it as a vegetarian restaurant. Once they found out Meeta is what Prabodh terms: “a militant vegetarian who will not cook meat even if you kill her”, the deal was sealed.
Subsequently he surprised his wife with the news. “I didn’t tell her I had taken the restaurant for her, so I took her for breakfast and asked her what she thought of the food. She said not bad. I asked her what do you think of the place and she said not bad. So I told her, ‘It’s yours!’” Despite her initial surprise, Meeta embraced the new venture gamely. “I knew she wanted it already as it was progressing that way with the catering,” says Prabodh.
Since they took over about four months ago, many changes have been made. Firstly, spice levels have been tweaked. “When we first took over, the food was too spicy and we have toned it down a couple of notches.” Instead, they wanted a more balanced approach — maybe one spicy item among milder-tasting dishes.
The health conscious will also be appreciative of their steps to discard a policy to keep overnight food. For instance, dhal improves in taste with time but is not healthy in the long run. “By four to five days, the dhal is very tasty but it sits like a rock in your stomach.” Even the combination of dishes offered on the menu, is a balanced meal of one portion each of starch, squash and green vegetable. “When you have a meal that is combined nicely, you have a pleasant experience.”
Being Gujaratis, the couple have also introduced their unique cuisine through a Sunday buffet brunch. “Gujarati food is very similar to Nyonya food as everything is made from scratch. It’s extremely tedious and laborious,” explains Viji Krishnamoorthy who is a friend of the couple.
The buffet introduced this January is also used to test the waters for a mix of dishes including various home-styled Gujarati dishes with some influence from the Malaysian Indian community. “We can introduce stuff to find out what people like or don’t like.” For instance, the gulab jamun was such a hit in the buffet that it’s now a permanent feature on their daily menu.
The response to their value-for-money buffet (RM16 per person from 10am to 3pm) has been overwhelming with crowds packing into the small cafe to dine on Gujarati favourites like khandvi or rolls made from chickpea flour that resemble chee cheong fun and dhokla made with fermented chickpea flour and dhal. You also get a variety of curries paired with chapati and rice. The personable couple also keeps the cafe atmosphere cheerful with their friendly chatter. Diners keep returning for the delicious food and friendly touch that some have even labeled it as their canteen.
Since there is only a small community of Gujaratis in Malaysia -- around 5,000 per Prabodh’s estimate -- the couple prefer not to just serve Gujarati dishes, but a combination of popular Indian dishes to cater to the general public. Hence in the daily menu, you find Malaysian favourites like roti canai, idli, thosai and chapatis mingling with lesser-known fluffy bhaturas served with chickpea chole and yoghurt masala.
Even the perennial favourite, nasi lemak is available. The vegetarian variant sells out quickly with packets filled with sambal, masala mushroom stems (mimics ikan bilis), peanuts with cucumber. There are also banana leaf rice or thali sets. For the weight watchers, you can also opt for their G-light menu for lighter meal with vegetables and dhal.
In addition, you find all kinds of snacks, like panipuri or dainty crackers filled with a mixture of potatoes and chickpeas. It’s eaten with a spiced mint water. These small dishes known as fershan in Gujarati cuisine bear a close resemblance to Spanish tapas. When you dine with Gujaratis, fershan and mithai or sweets is integral to their meal.
“Fershan starts the ball rolling and the mithai completes the job.” Prabodh elaborates that Gujaratis have a love affair with sugar. “With the exception of salt, we have sugar in everything including dhal and vegetables.” Hence there’s a hint of sweetness in bhakarwadi or the tasty but tedious to make pinwheels made from chapati dough filled with masala and sun-dried bananas.
In the month of May, the couple plan to close the cafe for renovations and possibly more menu tweaking. One of the ideas include introducing special dishes for Saturday. According to Prabodh, it could possibly be a noodle affair, that includes Khao Sae, a Burmese noodle dish Meeta learnt from her mother-in-law who once resided there. Not all dishes are Indian, as Meeta has picked many recipes. For instance, she promises an intriguing dish, a delicious concoction known as a pizza in the cup.
Meeta’s approach in the cafe’s kitchen is cooking by taste. The intuitive cook prefers to rely on taste rather than fixed measurements, a kind of agak-agak cooking style that she has passed on to her kitchen helpers. As the level of pungency for each batch of spices can differ, it’s better to taste and adjust the seasoning. “You must have a feel of the tweaking to maintain the same food quality,” explains Prabodh.
For instance, the taste of dishes need to be adjusted to when it is served. If a dish is served four hours later, the flavours infuse it further and that makes it saltier. But most importantly, Meeta’s special ingredient in the cafe’s food is her love
The Ganga Cafe
19, Lorong Kurau, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. Tel:03-22842119
03-22842119.
Open: 8.30am to 9.30pm. Closed on Mondays.
