Hotdog Millionaire

If you haven’t guessed, I’m in India right now and will be here for a while. It is in a word: HOT. Summers in India is like being in a permanent sauna. No matter how much sunblock, I get burned. I’m in Ahmedabad, on the eastern part of India in the state of Gujarat. It’s a lovely little city known for some of India’s top universities. A highlight was taking a little ride on a scooter – nothing like that experience! The rickshaws are much less hair-raising, but a lovely way to travel and it costs about Rs. 20 to get to major areas (about 40 cents) from the city center.

Of course, one of the first sights is good ole McDonald’s. I know it gets a lot of flak in the U.S. – I actually haven’t been to one in the U.S. in a long, long time, but I’m very tempted to try the one here. It is a finer dining experience, apparently, AND they deliver.

My life pretty much revolves around my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most of the meals here are vegetarian, but it’s a sort of vegetarian that is friendly to meat eaters. I don’t even seem to miss meat too much…sort of. Apparently, unless you go to the fanciest restaurants during the summer, beware meat because storage is not always guaranteed to be cold enough to avoid any bacteria. Have I eaten meat anyways here? Oh, yes.

There are certainly some familiar foods for Americans who love Indian food in the U.S. – masalas, chana (chickpeas), naan – the usual suspects. Here, though the food is much spicier and at least for my palate, far tastier than some of Indian food in the U.S. which tends to dull down its flavors. A standard lunch or dinner is started with a soup here such as spinach and corn soup (photo 6). Some sort of bread, such as dosa or naan, usually accompanies a dal (lentils) or a paneer (cheese) dish such as paneer tikki masala or a palak dish (spinach). On occassion, we get some meat such as the murgh mukhani (butter chicken) (photo 4) or fish such as the fish masala (photo 3).

The spices here have an added oomph and flavor, and some dishes are more unique than anything I have ever come across before in the U.S. As someone used to eating Indian food in America, few restaurants compare to this university dining experience. The one restaurant that does stick out in my mind is in Washington, DC: Rasika. There, Chef Vikram Sunderam has done a pretty fantastic job bringing a bit of India to the U.S. Esquire has rated it one of the top 20 restaurants in the U.S.

More to come.

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