When Indians stepped into Bombay’s elite clubs

The first club to admit Indians was the Willingdon Sports Club, which opened across the Mahalaxmi Race Course in 1917. It’s named after Freeman Freeman-Thomas, whose title was Lord Willingdon. He became Governor of Bombay in 1913 and was known for attempting to disrupt divisions that existed between communities. He encouraged Parsis, Hindus and Muslims, who played cricket in their respective gymkhanas, to play against the British at the Bombay Gymkhana. He invited friends belonging to princely families to the Yacht Club. When they were refused entry — even the Governor was not above club rules — Willingdon resigned. So, the first promoters of Willingdon’s inclusive new club included maharajas, nawabs and a handful of British officers.

The club was a lively place. It had its own orchestra from 1919 and a regular programme of balls, waltzes, swing jazz and lindy hop. Dinners were formal affairs, the service being either a la Russe (waiters serving individuals at the table) or a la Francaise (diners serving themselves from dishes arranged on the table). Things got more casual in 1920, when members could have “standing dinners” at which they were not required to wear formal clothes. It was a place where royalty gathered to party and the Aga Khan drank champagne poured from a jug.

There’s little record of chefs at the club in the early days except that they frequently moved between kitchens across the world. Naturally, they brought with them ideas and practices that were current in Europe. In fact, at the time, the idea of the restaurant as a place to eat fine food, enjoy impeccable service and socialise was shaping up. In the early twentieth century, the greatest of these was the Savoy hotel in London, which became the byword for fashionable dining under the partnership of its manager Cesar Ritz and chef Auguste Escoffier. Escoffier altered French culinary traditions by paring down embellishments and focusing instead on the food. No longer did dishes arrive at the table looking like they’d been constructed by an architect. The winds of change blowing from Escoffier’s kitchen swept through the Willingdon too. The Japanese Salad he created for a Japan embassy dinner at the Carlton Hotel in London appeared on the club’s menu as the Japonnaise Salade. It had fruit and cream spooned into a heart of lettuce.

In 1941, the club hired a French chef called George Esprit, under whose tutelage Goan cooks acquired the knowledge of and the skills to make European food. He taught chef Lazarus Fernandes how to make Willingdon Fowl, a baroque dish of fowl stuffed with pork, liver, eggs and bread, topped with bacon, baked in an oven and served steaming hot; and Pomfret Willingdon (beloved of the Maharani of Cooch Behar), in which fried fish was topped with cream sauce, tomato, mayonnaise and prawn.

The pomp of French service and European food continued into the 1960s, when the club’s Grill Room was the place to be on weekends. After drinks in the adjoining Permit Room, people would move here for dinner. Anthony Fernandes and Mendonca, the head butler and steward, would perform service a la Ruse. An appetiser or soup would be followed by Currimbhoy salad (a salad the Taj Mahal hotel claims to have created for the nineteenth century Khoja businessman Sir Currimbhoy Ibrahim) or a chilled prawn cocktail. The vegetarian entrees were stuffed tomatoes or a Waldorf salad, cutlets with gravy and an au gratin or ratatouille. Meat-eaters could pick between a roast or fish and have a Steak Diane, which would be wheeled to the table in a gueridon trolley and flambeed. For dessert, lemon souffle and crepes Suzette flambeed at the table. Dinner would be wrapped up with liqueur or coffee in the Permit Room.

The club also followed the very British tradition of serving curry, among the few Indian items produced in the kitchen. In the 1930s, a Goan cook called Leonard Fernandes was in charge of curries. After Independence, Anglo-Indian food, which has all but vanished from the city, emerged on the menu. Items such as Chicken Country Captain, Railway Mutton Curry, Duck Ding Ding, Vegetable Jalfraize and Pish Pash were served. Fernandes and his brethren were responsible for the buffaths, foogaths and vindaloo on the menu.

It’s clear that the writers of the wonderful biography of the club, At Home: At The Willingdon Sports Club 1917-2017, edited by Shireen Vakil, miss the days of fine European food when they moan that Croque Monsieur and Chicken A La King are no longer made. Welsh Rabbit seems to have lost its originality. Beer or ale are no longer used in the cheese sauce, which is now more of a mornay sauce with red chilli powder and mustard placed on a toast and put under the grill. The desserts aren’t what they used to be either. The celebrated Nougat Basket, a basket moulded from nougatine (caramel and crushed almonds) was transformed at some point in the club’s journey. The writer cannot help expressing her alarm in the book: “It is unknown as to why the Club’s original jewel of a recipe was randomly changed — alas, today the ‘Nougat Basket’ is made with sugar, peanuts and cashews!”

By the early decades of the twentieth century, a dining scene beyond the exclusive walls of clubs had begun to take shape. The Taj Mahal Hotel opened in Apollo Bunder in 1903. A roster of foreign chefs helmed the kitchens for nearly four decades, training legions of Indian cooks in European food, the most legendary being Goa native, Miguel Arcanjo Mascarenhas. Next door was Green’s Hotel, a four-storey mansion, built by a grocer called WB Green around the same time, and bought by the Taj in 1904. It was known for its oyster suppers, gin cocktails and somewhat louche atmosphere that kept only but the most daring women away.

— Excerpted with permission from, “In the beginning there was Bombay Duck: A Food History of Mumbai” by Pronoti Datta. Speaking Tiger.