Food!

This is a topic which is very close to my heart….closer to my stomach rather…FOOD!!! Let me tell you why i felt like writing this..Just now had a mail from Siddharth saying that the NYC gang has decided to treat the drivers (Seejo And Avneesh) and the finance manager ( who else but moi!!) .We get a chance to pick up any restaurant we want…I was actually thinking where to go when i realised that Seejo and I have exhausted all the restaurants around this place…

One thing common between Seejo and me is that we both love food..(very few things common between us anyway!!). Thats one of the reasons we get along fine!! Actually Seejo himself was quite amazed at the amount of food I devour..(eat is what he puts it as ,but i know gobble is what he means …! I thought i’ll bore you ppl with a desription of “taste of the world”!!!

First let me start with Italian..cos that is where Seejo took me on our first “date”…I loved Italian food primarily because it was dripping in cheese….Lasagna was great ..It has on cheesy layer after another and it just melted in the mouth. Italians also have a great way to make salads ..Their salad dressings too are quite tasty..

Next on the list is Mexican..Most indian students love Mexican food because it is the one which is closest to the Indian palate..It is spicy( well spicier than American food at least!) and most food is based on chapatti like base..They give it dofferent names though ..So you have chalupas,burritos ,tacos ,tortillas ..all of them are chappati like with stuffings of chicken/beef/beans etc..Mexicans eat a lot of beans anyway ..but give me apna frankie anytime!! what wouldn’t i give for a chicken frankie from outside NM!! The items on the menu are funny to pronounce anyway..THey ronounce the “J” as “H” so Jalapeno pepper is Halapeno pepper and baja beans is Baha Beans ..Tortillas are tortiyas and so on…anyway another important plus point in favour of the Mexican cuisine is that it is the cheapest..so it is the best!!:-) “sasta ani masta ”

Indian /Pakistani food ..I do not need to describe but it is the most expensive among all of the cuisines here and the worst thing is that all the curries taste the same at the restaurants here..The Pakistani restaurant has better food than the Indian one( run by a Maharashtrian couple)The ppl at “Maharaja” seem to make the same base for all their curries so it all tastes the same veg or non veg!! Note that this is on he basis of my 6 months stay in US and only sampling the cuisines offered by Charlottesville,

Chinese..Well you might think whats new in Chinese cuisine…we have that all the time but the menu in a Chinese restaurant seems very different from the one back home …Unlike the Singapore noodles and the hongkong noodles and the Manchurians and the Schezwan ..the things that dominate here are the sesame chicken ( my favourite) and General tso’s chicken etc..Chinese food is what has the widest variety ..and they use all possible meats..chicken pork,shrimp, beef ..(My selection is rather limited to chicken and beef!!) i really can’t stand sea food ..and pork is” uh huh well ok types”…The Chinese spring roll though is present and so is the wanton soup….Noodles are quite similar to whats there in India though ..although they have thin and thick noodles! but really bland and much much more oily!!

Most Japanese restaurants are similar to Chinese restaurants..most of them even share common dishes…But the star in Japanese restaurant is Sushi…which is raw fish (remember Aruna!!!) wrapped in a rice roll served with a kind of soy sauce ..There are varieties of sushi available some even have a veg sushi which has cucumber instead of meat…I was very unsure when i tried it but well it was not all that bad….

We went to the German restaurant mainly because of its name Schnitzel..remember Sound of music “schnitzel with noodles ..these are a few of my favouirte things..”Unfourtunately those will certainly not be one of my favoutire things atleast based on this restaurant….German food was quite like English food …seemed like chunks of raw meat with as less seasongings as possible!! But i had venison (deer meat) Which was quite hard actually …with a name like venison and deer meat i thought it would be soft but….deers are welcome for lions and tigers but definitely not for me..The food was quite bland although the waitresses were quite pretty..They were dressed in the Bavarian costume with checked skirt and high breasted blouse with ruffles on the front.!!

Thai food is obviously is spicy…And i loved it Its my favourite next to Indian food atleast for the present…Most of their preparations had coconut milk in it and we even got mangoes for dessert…Thai food has a lot of Tofu in it which is similar to paneer but is not paneer ..It is soyabean curd i think ( I am not sure what!!) Again what we mainly had was chicken and it certainly was spicy!!

The cuisine which i found most similar to Indian was Vietnamese though…Most of their food has a peanut in it or tamarind which is quite similar to South Indian preparations They even had a salad dressing which tasted like pepper rasam!! Their noodles was vermicelli and the chicken curry tasted like the Kerala chicken curry…But its rather impossible to prnounce the names of the dishes ..what we do is like we want one no.120 and one of #56 and two # 544 and one #767 for dessert and that will be all! 🙂 And they even had a chicken dish which was sort of like kababs!!

Brazilian food tasted differnt than all other cuisnes ..We had chicken stuffed with crab with creamy sauce and it was delicious ..I really could not say that it tasted like so and so or soemthing all i say is that it was GOOD!!! Greek food sounds like greek too ,.what i had was gyros which was croissant like thing stuffed with cheese and chicken…As i said Cheese and chicken is my daily diet!!!

Now to the food of America….The major component of the food is salad which i love. Each salad comes with various types of salad dressings …Mostly when i eat American cuisine i start off with the main course have a course of salads eat the dessert and end with salad again…And my mom says i don’t eat food!!!!The actual food is generally sausages or chicken fried or something stuck between bagels (something like buns)or buns!…Remember how all the books used to rave about mashed potatos I thought it was some recipe but all they do is just boil the potatoes and mash them!! then they have a dish called gravy ..which is nothing but gray with no dishes the Americans certainly are crazy ppl!!!

But the eating expereince I most enjoyed was Ethiopian food. You are seated around a low table and the server gets you one large plate with a large dosa like bread called “injera”and all the dishes are served on that plate. All of you eat from the same plate with your hands ..Similar to the Bohri style of eating. African food has some similarity to Indian cuisine too. They even have a triangular shaped appetizer filled with potatoes and peas called sambusas. The main food …the bread was like a thick dosa and they had different varieties of dal in their vegetarian section. And i must mention the excellent mutton curry that they had.

I could go and and on when it comes to food, so I better stop here.