Blog - India 2012 #5: The Food
India 2012 #5: The Food
Food is always a big motivation for us to travel. While we were in India, most of time we ate local Indian food.
It started from the in-flight meal. As we chose Air India, usual "beef or chicken?" dialog is replaced with "vege or non-vege?". Curry is implied of course. In the train to Agra, we were not even asked that question, it seemed vege meal is the default unless you ask non-vege by yourself.
Once at our hotel's vege restaurant, while queuing to order our food another guest tried to order chicken. Obviously there was no chicken and the guy seemed surprised and asked "why you don't eat chicken?!" and the waiter replied "why do you have to eat chicken? Haha!".
Before heading to India, we did some research about restaurants so we already had a long list, but sometimes we just asked randomly for a recommended place where to eat. Most people are nice and are happy to tell you their favorite.
We mostly ate at middle-class restaurants this time, the price range is about Rs. 100 to 500 for a dish, no too small local joints or vendor food except for papad and a masala popsicle.
Here's a categorized list of where we ate. (NV = non-vege, V = vege)
Delhi
- North Indian: Park Balluchi (NV)
- South Indian: Gunpowder (NV), Sagar Ratha (V), Nayvedyam (V)
- Tibetan: Yeti (NV)
- Fusion Indian & European: Indian Accent (NV)
- Other: Elma's Bakery (NV), Gelato Roma
Jaipur
- North Indian: Copper Chimney (NV), Hotel Arya Niwas (V)
- Rajasthani: LMB (V)
- Other: Steam (NV), Lassi Wala (one of them?)
Even though this was our second time in India we had not been to high-end restaurant, so we decided to give a try to Indian Accent at the Manor Hotel in Friend's Colony. We had no clue where it is or what it's like, we had just finished shopping in the Mehar Chand market area and took an auto with some big shopping bags. Finally when we made it to the neighborhood with our troublesome driver (it's another story...) we were a bit surprised. Clean! Calm! No horns! No auto!
The hotel itself seemed pretty small but with a nice atmosphere and the restaurant is located in the back of the building. After having an aperitif we were led to the table. Most guests were foreigners but there were Indian people too.
We ordered the chef's non-vege and vege tasting menus with pairing wines. All the food we had wasn't very spicy but it was pretty good with interesting presentations. However the portions were way too big for our average Japanese stomachs so it was really hard to finish all the dishes.
The service was decent. While we were having dessert we asked to call a taxi as we didn't see any auto around the hotel and it came right after we finished payment. It was a good experience after all.
By the way, we never had any upset stomach while in India. We think it's because we always take lactobacillus supplements... but maybe we're just lucky. :)
Larger sizes and many more food photos at Flickr
Posted on November 1, 2012 at 21:59 | Tweet
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