Whine and dine
INDU BALACHANDRAN
| The ecstasy and the agony of eating out. |
BEFORE marriage, the three best words a couple loves to hear from each other are "I Love You". Later, the three best words are probably "Let's Eat Out".
With new speciality restaurants popping up like mushrooms — in fact, I heard one opened last week called Mushroom Mania — there are so many new exciting ways to eat, without having a pile of dishes to wash up later. And eating out can be enjoyed in such fine combinations of activity these days — buy books and eat, watch a play and eat, enjoy a movie and eat, go bowling and eat...
But, I must say one combination seemed a bit suspicious to me. This was a petrol station with a restaurant attached. A board outside announced, "You can eat here, and get gas".
Decisions, decisions...
The eating-out industry depends largely on people like us who stare at the refrigerator every day, fraught with indecision wondering what to cook, and then decide it is far simpler to decide to eat out instead.
Indecisions
Ha! Now is when the real indecision starts... Which place? Asks the one behind the steering wheel after getting into the car. Oh, any place is absolutely cool with me, choruses everyone. Okay, then how about that new Chettinad restaurant that everyone is talking about? Oh NO, chorus the voices again. ANYthing but Chettinad." And so the indecision goes on: Anything but Chinese; anything but Punjabi...
When rising hunger pangs force a "where" finally, there comes another decision to be made at the venue: which table? (At home you have only one, but here you have such a choice.)
After a consensus on the most suitable table, you settle down, and the waiter arrives to force one more decision out of you. Mineral water or restaurant water? Now is when you have to decide how you want to come through to the waiter: as a stylish diner who'll pay a fat premium for bottled water, or appear cheap and say, ordinary water will do.
And then staring at the menu, back we come to the same dilemma of where it all started: What to eat?
Good things
Despite knowing the rule that the longer the description of the dish, the bigger the bill, we will, from time to time, land up in utterly posh places, open a huge designer menu card, and nonchalantly tap at, say, "Risotto Supreme: cooked with freshly flown-in mountain-dew from the Swiss Alps, and served with our chef's repertoire of Milanese sauces gently simmered with Moroccan wild thyme" and turn to the waiter and ask "Is it good?"
Well. What did we expect the waiter to say? "Well, the rice is totally undercooked, there's a funny dark coloured sauce quite alien to our Indian tastes, two sprigs of broccoli, unsalted, and the portion is so tiny you may have to go home and eat curd rice or die of hunger in your bed tonight... "
Instead of which the waiter says, "Excellent choice! You picked the best dish of all; in fact it was Bill Clinton's favourite when he visited India."
Exotic names
I remember once ordering "A Mediterranean blend of farm-fresh, sun-kissed legumes sautéed and combined with herbs de Provence and grilled to perfection in a gentle dip of bakery-fresh crumbled bread" ... whose common name was a vegetable cutlet, of course, but who knew that? After a 45-minute wait (which made me think, I am the waiter, waiting and waiting, not that snooty waiter there who is trained never to catch your eye once your order is placed... ), two cutlets, the size of one-rupee coins arrived in a huge square designer plate, decorated very artistically with a zigzag line of sauce, an elegant piece of coriander and a tomato skilfully cut and shaped to look like the Sydney Opera House.
After a while, the specially flown-in French chef personally dropped by our table to ask, "So how did you find the meal?" "With a magnifying glass," I wanted to say. Instead of course, I gushed "C'est magnifique!"
And at the other extreme are honest restaurant managers who like to say it like it is. Down my road is Varalakshmi Tiffin Home, an international restaurant serving Indian, North Indian and Chinese "Cueesines" where omelette is spelt armlet and peas pilaf is spelt peace pullow, and where the two most popular dishes are Chow Mean and Sholay Bhature. But one item written on the menu board in chalk outside Velmurugan Meals (specialising in North Indian food) had me mystified, as I drove past it every day to work.
Right on top of the list was Malai Gupta. Perhaps an authentic UP dish named after the chef? I used to wonder. Then the penny dropped one day. It was Malai Kofta of course.
Well, God forbid any Chinese traveller (now that the borders between our countries are open) from actually entering any of our South Indian Chinese speciality dining halls, and find out what Gopi Manjurian is all about. And so what if some sambar powder was added to make it really tasty for the auto rickshaw drivers who regularly drop by.
Reddy meals
Meanwhile, People Like Us will continue to eat out at the most exotic restaurants, where the tip alone could feed the average Indian family of six a totally satisfying thali each at any "Meals Reddy" place.
However, recently while dining at a new, classy European bistro, I found my "Bean Goulash with Courgette Dumplings" bland and boring beyond belief — and so I decided to protest. "I'd like to see the Chef please," I said in a dignified but firm, threatening voice.
"Sorry M'am," said the waiter. "He's gone out for lunch".
Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail
No comments:
Post a Comment