FOOD

When talking to people back home, what I probably get asked the most about is the food. I’m happy to say that I picked the right country to be in: the amount of vegetarian options is stunning. Instead of forcing my friends to find a restaurant with a decent veg menu, I’m now being inconvenienced by my carnivorous friends as we have to hunt around for a place with sufficient meat offerings. So if you’ve ever been annoyed by my lack of flexibility, come visit me in India. Revenge is a dish best served with that chicken you “just have to have”.

Anyway, there is Indian food aplenty. Earlier in the summer, there were a ton of other RAs around, so we went out to nice places for dinner pretty much every night. This led to the discovery of a lot of Indian dishes whose existence I had never even had inkling of, especially as most Indian restaurants in the US (that I’ve been to) don’t seem to serve any south Indian food. I like north Indian food better, but now I can make a total ass of myself in US Indian restaurants by snorting and saying “what kind of Indian restaurant doesn’t have dosas?” (kind of like crepes).

Pretty much every day for lunch, we go to a dhaba. Imagine the shadiest restaurant you know of in the US, the one you always avoid because you think it’s pretty much guaranteed to give you food poisoning. Now take away A/C, make it based out of a 10 ft by 20 ft garage type space, and lower the age of the employees to about 12. That’s our dhaba. It’s basically the same food every day: dal (lentils), roti (bread), rice (you might not know what that is, I should probably explain further), an aloo (potato)/ghobi(califlower) or something else dish, and onions/raita (yogurt). We can’t even drink the water there, but for Rs. 25 (about 55 cents), it’s awesome. I’ll try to post a picture sometime, but that might lead to my parents getting super worried. In its defense, no one has ever gotten sick from the food, which is not true of most of the other places we go. Wait, that might not help...

But I ….I have a confession to make: I have been bad, bad in such a way as to embarrass my entire people group (Americans). Yes, that’s right, I have…. been eating a bunch of non-Indian food while in India. Forgive me, I know that there are negative externalities (i.e. confirming many stereotypes about Americans’ lack of culinary adventurousness), but sometimes all I want is a Subway sandwich. Suffice to say, the people at Dominoes now know me as Mr. Jeff, and I know at least four of their names without having to look at a name tag. Still, Delhi is missing one crucial type of foreign food: burritos. I’ve slowly assembled the ingredients for Indian style burritos, so am quite looking forward to that, as Delhi’s offerings are quite disappointing. A friend and I semi-seriously considered a road trip to the Taco Bell in Hyderabad (insanely far away), but for now, I’ll longingly think about bean and cheese burritos as I eat yet another new type of dal.

This is enough for one post, perhaps more to follow later on this topic. There’s certainly plenty to say!