Time to feast on seafood

We continue our reader-driven series on great restaurants and eating places across the country.

Mrinalini Rajpal who describes herself as 'food-obsessed', recommends Sanman in Alibaug for great seafood.

Coastal cuisine in Alibaug? No big surprise there.

The taste and price for the food? Now, that is mind-blowing.

A small restaurant in Alibaug called Sanman (any rickshaw driver in Alibaug will take you there, it's five minutes from Hotel Big Splash) is where you should head if you're going to Alibaug/ Mandva for a weekend trip or even for a day.

It's a small, clean, no-fuss restaurant with warm, friendly service by the owners and waiters.

Now for the most important part -- the food. We started out with a plate of mid sized Fried Prawns and Masala Prawns for Rs 45 a plate. The prawns were fresh, crisp and had the right amount of masala -- not overtly spicy or too bland.

We then moved on to a dish of oysters, or tesriya as it's locally called, and a plate of fried Bombay duck or bombil. The oysters were cooked in a rich kokam gravy, had a garlicky taste and were soft and succulent. The Bombay duck had a crisp, outer rice flour coating fried to perfection; it just melted in your mouth. And the price? Rs 50 for the oysters and Rs 35 for three big pieces of Bombay duck.

Then came the Masala Garlic Crab, a very big one if I may add. It was the freshest, most tender crab I've had, with the juices intact and cooked perfectly. What shocked me was the price on this massive crab -- Rs 250 only.

Along with this, we had to have the Pomfret Rice Plate. You can also have the rice place with any fish of your choice.

A pomfret plate consists of an entire mid sized shallow-fried pomfret, a plate full of rice, a thick curry with a piece of pomfret, a bowl of Sukha Jhinga (dried baby prawns), ghee chapatis and a bowl of sol kadi. Soul food, anyone? The price for this entire plate is a measly Rs 90.

And the price for this entire feast? Rs 600 for four very happy gourmands.

Mrinalini Rajpal, 22, is a law student.

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