India: Eating Out is a Rich Experience

Vacations & Travel - Summer 2003/04

It’s the first question anyone asks you when you return from India. “Did you get Delhi belly?” Yet by observing the same rules of food hygiene that apply in many countries, it is easily possible to travel in India without suffering any ill-effects at all. Sadly, people’s perceptions of India as a country plagued with poverty and unsafe hygiene overshadows its riches: its impressive scenery, fascinating historical and cultural treasures, incredibly polite and hospitable people, and its rich and varied cuisine. As Lonely Planet’s World Food India guidebook says, “Amazingly, many travelers ‘do’ India despite the food, regarding it as something suspect, to be tolerated or even avoided.” If that’s you, the book says, “you’ll be like a pebble skimming across the cultural surface. You might get splashed every now and then but you’ll never be immersed in India’s cultural riches.” Indeed. Think of eating in India not with trepidation, but as a wonderful opportunity to learn the intricacies of the cuisine.

A variety of flavours, textures, colours and aromas characterizes Indian food, whether it be the Mughal-influenced meat dishes, biryanis (fragrant rice casseroles), kebabs, kormas and other dishes of the north, the tandoor of Punjab, or the vegetarian dishes of the south. While some dishes might appear on menus in many parts of the country, they take on subtle differences every few kilometers or so, which all adds up to an exciting experience for travellers. Fine restaurants are a relatively new concept throughout India. Even today, most Indians still believe the best food is cooked in private homes. However, with a growing middle and upper class, there’s also a growing number of restaurants and five-star hotel dining rooms to choose from.

One of the best hotel meals I had was at the New Kenilworth Hotel in Kolkata (previously Calcutta). Its Marble Room restaurant has an extensive menu from which we selected a Bengali specialty, Chingri Malai Curry (jumbo prawn curry cooked in coconut milk); Murg Tikka Makhan Masala (boneless chicken pieces cooked in a flavoursome spicy gravy) and Methi Mattar Malai (a creamy combination of fenugreek leaves and green peas), served with boiled rice and naan. This was one of the few places I saw curry listed as such on a menu. Although Indians do sometimes use the word curry to describe a spicy wet dish, it is more of an English term, derived from the Tamil word “kari” meaning black pepper. Curry powder, as we know it, is non-existent among Indian condiments. Indian cooks wouldn’t dream of using one generic combination of spices.

At finer Indian restaurants like the Marble Room, it is possible to enjoy wine with your meal, and it was here that I sampled one of the results of India’s fledgling wine industry, a pleasant enough bottle of Chantilly Chardonnay. In Jaipur, I tried another white, made by Chateau Indage, which began importing root stock from France in the early 1980s and has been producing its wine in technical collaboration with the French. Bottled under the Riviera label, it was made from ugni blanc and pinot noir grapes grown on the upper slopes of the Sahyadri Valley in western Maharashtr. According to the label, this region has a history of producing wines for the courts of kings and emperors in India. The Riviera wine was very fruity and to my taste, not as attractive as the Chardonnay.

The finale at the Marble Room was a Bengali delicacy called Rasogolla, little balls of dough made from curdled milk and boiled in a sugar syrup with a few drops of rose essence. This sweet is often enjoyed during the country’s most widely celebrated national festival, Diwali, the festival of lights. The Indians are mad about sweets, as evidenced by the sweet shops which abound in every city. At a cultural evening at New Delhi’s Garden of Five Senses, we enjoyed jalebi, orange-coloured whorls of batter that are deep-fried and dipped in syrup. They look like lace and are wickedly sweet and delicious. To offer sweets in India is the ultimate act of friendship, a sign of love and affection, which makes it extra difficult to resist treats such as the hugely popular Gulab Jamun, deep-fried balls of milk dough.

The most exquisite dessert I had was in Jagdalpur, perhaps because it was more subtle than many of the sweets. A creamy dessert called Ras Malai, it was garnished with pistachio and cardamom. Pistachio nuts and cardamom were also used to garnish the semolina pudding, Sabudana kheer, that we had for breakfast at the Babylon Hotel in Raipur, capital of the newly created state of Chhattisgarh. The Babylon’s fine dining restaurant, strangely named The Shells despite it being nowhere near the sea, promised “best measured personalized hospitality” and indeed, at one stage we had seven staff hovering over our table of two as we cooked a selection of kebabs and other meats over a small charcoal barbecue at the table.

From Raipur, it is a 300km drive to Jagdalpur, the regional centre of Bastar where a newly emerging tourist industry introduces travellers to tribal communities with their own languages and customs. This is a region where time has stood still, and because very few westerners have travelled here, there’s a real feeling of exploring somewhere colourful, exotic and unspoilt. The road between the two cities passes verdant countryside with no sign of the squalor seen in the big cities. Mango trees line the roads, while the fields support crops of barley, wheat, maize and rice. An incredible 11,000 varieties of rice are grown in India, and our guide, Santosh, tells us that the short-grain dubraj variety which is favoured in Chhattisgarh is not grown anywhere else in India. “It has a very good aroma,” he says. “The people here are very fond of it.” At a roadside café in Kanker, the halfway point between Raipur and Jagdalpur, we saw the same image that is repeated in countless locations across the country: a man making masala dhosa, crepes made from fermented rice flour and daal, and another turning out delicious naan (bread) from a tandoor oven.

Visiting a local market is always a fascinating experience and this is no less so in India. The Indian haat (market) reflects the area in which it is located. An area with a large Moslem population might have more meat, for example, while an area near the coast has an abundance of fish. At the weekly haat in Bastar, men and women wearing brightly coloured clothing and brass jewellery come on foot from up to 20km away to sell their grain, corn, fruit, vegetables, potatoes, bamboo shoots, dried fish and live chickens. So rarely have the locals seen westerners that their reaction to your presence – from stares right through to crowds gathering around you – is one of those “pinch me to tell me this is real” experiences. An introduction to these tribal communities needs to be arranged through a local guide (this can be organized by Chhattisgarh Tourism).

Next to the haat is a liquor market, the locals doing their buying, selling and bartering as quickly as possible so that they can move on to the more important business of drinking. Among the more popular beverages in Bastar are mahua, distilled from the flowers of the mahua tree, and landhi, a milky white beverage made from fermented rice and wheat. Drunk from a cup made from a leaf, they are highly alcoholic. If there’s one drink in India that transcends all classes, it is chai, steaming, frothy tea that is made with loads of sugar and more milk than water. Coffee is also popular, with towns and cities throughout India boasting coffee houses where people hang out over a cup of coffee while discussing politics and the affairs of the day. In Kolkata, the coffee house run by the Indian Coffee Workers Co-operative Society at 15 Bankum Chatterjee Street dates from 1930 and has an old-fashioned ambience. Housed in what was once a colonial ballroom, it is an experience not to be missed.

For travellers, one of the best introductions to Indian food is the “thali”, an assortment of meat and/or vegetarian dishes served on a single platter, much like a one-person banquet. At the Chandan Restaurant, in Bhubaneswar’s Swosti Plaza Hotel, my thali included little bowls of fish and potato curry, made with rohi, a type of carp; mansha tarakari, one of the region’s classic mutton dishes; daal; cabbage and potato; eggplant mashed with spices; steamed basmatic rice and accompaniments. There was also a delicious sweet, chhena poda, soft paneer (cheese made from milk curd) which had been cooked under charcoal and caramelized.

Capital of the state of Orissa, Bhubaneswar is dubbed the “soul of India” because of its strong historical links with several of the world’s great religions. There were once 10,000 temples in this fascinating city; now there are about 200, with just seven or eight of them on the tourist trail. The Chandan restaurant specializes in classic Oriya dishes, where fish from the rivers and nearby coast takes pride of place in almost every meal. The restaurant is beautifully decorated with shells, nautical objects and a mural depicting Indian fishing villages. Here, in one of the city’s finest restaurants, the complete meal cost $A5 for the meat-based thali and $A3 for the vegetarian thali. Dining out so cheaply is one of the great attractions of travelling in India.

After the meal, I was handed a form and asked for my feedback. The wording was amusing in the way that English in another cultural context invariably is: “How was the food? Tasty and sumptuous? Palatable? Left a bad taste in the mouth?” “What do you feel about the ambience and atmosphere? Aesthetically done up? Ordinary? Misplaced and mismatched?” “Your comment about our staff? Made you comfortable and attended well? Lack in professional approach? Hostile and rough?” I laughed so much I asked for a second form to keep as a souvenir. But as much as it says something about our silly Australian humour, I mention this story because it also says a lot about the wonderful hospitality of the Indian people. Nowhere did the food leave a bad taste in the mouth, and everywhere I went, people were unfailingly friendly and polite. I can’t imagine anyone would ever need to tick the box for “hostile and rough”.

© Christine Salins

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