Eating Through The Koli Seafood Festival, Mumbai

Despite my interest in food, I’d never heard of the Koli Seafood Festival. The last weekend was supposed to be a pretty uneventful one – simply catching up with my friend Roy over a movie. That was until he shared a Facebook event about the festival and we decided to give it a shot.

Currently in its 11^th year, the Koli Festival attempts to showcase the food culture of the Kolis, the earliest inhabitants of Mumbai. If you’ve been in Mumbai for a while, you’ve probably already run into a Koli fisherwoman on a railway station platform or the luggage compartment of a Mumbai local. They thrive in little pockets of the city, in ‘koliwadas’ – homes by the seaside. Kolis literally helped develop the harbours and coastlines at a time when Mumbai was still known as Bombay.

Every January, the festival is held on a large ground in Versova, Andheri over a span of three days. It welcomes the start of a new fishing season and the entire community celebrates, much like the farmers do during the monsoons. Apparently, before the festival begins, prayers are offered to the sea God and their boats are worshiped.

A string of stalls is erected to showcase Koli seafood and a massive stage in the front showcases their culture in the form of song and dance. Koli women prepare over 20-25 varieties of fish from early evening to well past midnight. The buzz, the noise and the crowd, is literally that of a fish market, and since an event of this kind is rare, those who know of it descend there by the hundreds, even with no publicity. It reminded me a lot of Manek Chowk, Ahmedabad’s vegetarian night market that attracts locals and tourists from the time the jewelry-shop lined street closes until dawn.

If you’re a sucker for delicious seafood, the event is right up your alley. Well-dressed, bejewelled Koli mothers and grandmothers enthusiastically cook and talk to each other as animatedly as they would have in their own kitchen. The younger ones can barely hold back their excitement as they walk around telling people about all the items in their stalls and take orders. Apart from making a killing, every stall is run by men and women who cut, clean, marinate, fry and serve the food like it is a defiant gesture of their slowly disappearing community.

Making your way along the stalls is a feast for the senses. You’ll see fresh pomfrets being slathered on with red masala, kingfish being grilled, mollusks on hot coal and mammoth sized prawns being fried in sizzling hot oil. The heady, intoxicating aroma makes you drool before you’ve taken a bite. At the tables, people mop up their prawn and clam gravy with bakhras (rice rotis) and sip their solkadi while ordering dish after dish.

It’s best to take a walk around to see what a few stalls have to offer before commencing the challenging task of finding a table. Once you know which stall’s seafood looks the most tempting, you can then choose from dishes like fried bombil, fish and prawn curries, prawn biryani, tandoori crab/fish/prawns, stuffed mackerals, grilled crabs and more.  I absolutely loved the fried bombil! The stuffed pomfret that the family next to me was attacking looked gorgeous too!

If you’re feeling thirsty, all stalls also serve alcohol and soft drinks. Thankfully, the cool January air made the experience pleasant. I dread to think of a similar festival in summer – the heat amplified by the sheer mass of people, hot, frying fish and burning coal beneath the grills.

 

I can’t wait for more events like these to happen. They sure beat watching a movie and hanging out at the mall! I only wish they got as much hype as the premium ones held in places like Mahalaxmi Race Course an Bandra Gym do because once the word spreads, the festival has already ended. And if you’re not following me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, I wouldn’t be able to tell you at the spur of the moment either! *hint hint*

Anyway, we sampled around 6 items and our bill totaled 1300 – not bad at all!

Have you ever been to the Koli Seafood Festival? I’d love to hear all about it! Comment below and let me know!

Bye for now! <3