Solkadi Malwani

We opened up this place in Karve Nagar on Ali Askar Road a while back. It’s a small shop, mostly focused on the kind of food we grew up with back home. The kitchen is always full of the smell of coconut and dried fish. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze when we have a full house, but people don't seem to mind sitting close together. We spend a lot of time grinding spices and making the solkadi fresh every day. It’s the kind of cooking that takes time, so you can't really rush it. My sister helps with the orders and I stay in the back mostly. We don't have a big menu because we only want to make what we are good at. Sometimes we run out of fish early if the market didn't have anything good that morning. We just tell people honestly and they usually understand. The street outside is mostly quiet compared to the main road, which is nice. We get a lot of families on the weekends who want a taste of Malwan. It’s not a fancy restaurant with waiters in uniforms. It’s just us serving food on plain plates. We just want to make sure the flavors are right and people leave with a full stomach. It’s been hard work getting it started, but we like seeing the same faces come back every week.