'Highway On My Plate' or HOMP has been my favorite food show for quite some time. I'm sure that those who already know Rocky and Mayur must be also finding them as hilarious as I find them. For those who don't, HOMP is a food and travel show on NDTV Goodtimes where two childhood friends travel across the country to explore various cuisines. They started off the series by traveling to several 'Dhabas' along the national highways all over the India. Then they explored a bit of South-East Asian cuisines. When that got over, they "ate like Gods" in all the Indian festivals in various cities. Then they went to numerous schools and colleges to find out which school/college canteen is famous for what special dish. This was followed by them travelling along the Indian peninsula from coast to coast, devouring different types of coastal cuisine, starting from Gujarat and finishing the season off in the Sunderbans. The show has been renewed for a fresh season where Rocky and Mayur will travel across the hills to experiment with the local delicacies.
What I love about the show is their unique style of presenting and the poorest of the PJs they crack. E.g. they point at few fishermen on a boat and proclaim "Something's fishy". They literally translate the 'Vada Pao' as the 'Big Foot', etc. All their episodes start with "We're back. And we're hungry." and at the end of the episode, they give us a "food quote" which is a 4-line poem summarizing how their experience was during the course of the episode. Sometimes the quotes are as silly as they can be and sometimes 'pure genius'. Either way, they don't fail to make you laugh. Also they give us a report card on 1 or 2 major restaurants they have visited in the episode, in terms of taste, ambiance, service and value for money. Mayur, being vegetarian, sometimes struggles, especially in the 'Coast to Coast' season, and all his co-host cum friend Rocky does is give him merciless grins and chew away all the seafood and meat. Besides food, they also give some general information about the place they are visiting/ traveling through. Watch NDTV Goodtimes at 8PM to catch a glimpse of HOMP to see them chomp.
