Food - First Day

I didn't promise you an expeditious excursion through India. This will be my fifth post on India and I'm still on our first day. But, as the true gourmands you know us to be, maybe you're wondering about about our first impressions of Indian food in India. Breakfast was included with our room so we ate at the Good Times. They have a fabulous rooftop terrace there (I can't believe I didn't get a picture - but I didn't.) and the weather was perfect for al fresco dining once you waded through the air. Today we ordered off the menu. (The following two days they had a buffet.) I didn't recognize any of the Indian dishes, shattering my conceit that I was an expert on Indian food. With the help of an Indian tourist, we ordered paratha and puri, as well as an omelet. When the dishes came, I realized I did know the food; I just didn't recognize the names. Paratha is a flat bread stuffed with various things - herbs and spices and sometimes cheese or potatoes. It is panfried in a flat-bottomed skillet. Our Indian helper raved about the paratha and we liked it ok but had often had Indian breads that were as good.

But the puri was excellent, but not anything we would have thought of as breakfast. Puri is an unleavened bread deep fried in oil. It is light, moist and puffy and it is almost always served with a vegetable curry of some kind. Today it was potato (aloo puri). Paratha and puri were to become a breakfast staples for the rest of the trip. Every breakfast buffet offered a variation of these items, plus plain yogurt and some western dishes. The omelet was disappointing. I was hoping for an Indian variation but it was just bland and boring eggs. Oh, yes, tea - we had wonderful creamy masala chai, the Indian variation of milky tea with spices in it. The closest approximation in America would be a Chai Latte at Starbucks.

We were being lazy today with a very late breakfast. So we skipped lunch. the plan was to splurge on a 5-star dinner at the highly recommended Bukhara Restaurant in the Sheraton Hotel. We had 9 people lined up so I thought maybe reservations were in order. Good thing I called because the restaurant was totally booked for the night. This put us at a loss because there were virtually no restaurants in the area of our hotel. When were returning from the afternoon shopping trip, our guide Surdh was careful to point out the restaurants we should and should not go to. Unfortunately, there was only one he designated as safe for us to go to. I didn't know if he rejected some of the choices because he thought the food was too spicy or because of hygiene issues. But we weren't ready to take any chances this early in the trip so we went with his recommendation.

In the afternoon, with Surdh, it took about 5 minutes to walk from the restaurant to the hotel. In the evening, by ourselves, we only got lost 3 times before resorting to the ignominious choice of tracking our exact route from the afternoon, forcing us in a circle requiring 30 minutes for our 5 minute walk. Stupid Indian streets! But we did get to see some of the famed Diwali lights, brightly lit for the festival.

The name of the restaurant is Shudh, billing itself as a vegetarian food court. And it was a cafeteria style place with stations for different regional foods - Northern Indian, Southern Indian, Chinese and Italian. You make your selection by checking off items on a paper menu, hand it to the cashier and pay. You get a number and then wait for the number to light up at the station preparing your food. Unless you are an ignorant foreign looking tourist. In that case, they bring your food to your table. There was one other Western group in the restaurant and they also had their food delivered while the Indians had to go schlep their own trays.

The menu had the same dishes you would see in a vegetarian Indian restaurant in America. For some reason this surprised me. I guess I thought we only got the highest end Indian food and that real Indians ate somewhat simpler fare. We tried our favorite dishes from America so we could make a good comparison. Among the five of us, I was able to sample Mattar Paneer (peas and cheese in curry sauce) Dal Makhani (black lentils), onion kulcha (a flat bread), Aloo Gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) and Galub Jamun (a dessert). Every dish in this plain Jane cafeteria was at least as good as the finest Indian restaurants we have been to. The main difference was $7 for this meal versus $20 in an American restaurant. We have great hopes for this trip.