The first time I tried Indian food was during fall semester 2014. A couple of friends and I decided that we wanted to get lunch from one of Portland’s food carts. So we came across this food cart called Tandoor’s Saffron Indian Kitchen on the corner of 9th & Washington. By that time I already knew that I was going to be studying in India next year. So I decided I might as well have a taste of Indian food. I remembered I ordered chicken Biriyani wrapped in naan (it was almost like an Indian burrito, but not really). My first bite was extremely spicy, and by the time I was half way done with my chicken biryani wrap, my mouth was on fire!
About a year later. . .
Spices
So here I am in India, where we were advised to not eat street food for the first few weeks due sanitation purposes as well as doing our digestive systems a favor sense we were not use to Indian spices. For most of our days, we would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at our residency. For breakfast I would stick mostly stick to a typical breakfast I would have back at home (yogurt, fruit, eggs) for the sake of transitioning smoothly into the variety of spices the other meals would consist off. There were a few occasions were even the small amount of spice the food in our residency had that upset my stomach. I was warned this would happen though, and that sure didn’t stop me from eating spicy food. Eventually, after three weeks my stomach started getting use to digesting the variety of spices I was consuming. It might sound like I am exaggerating, but I promise the spices in India are at another level. It’s not that the food is necessarily hot all the time, but many flavors get put into one dish to create a spice party! Yay!
Vegetarian Thali Dish — Connaught Place
I want to talk about two occasions were the food I ate left me in awe due to how amazingly delicious it was. A few students and our trip leaders went to a Thali restaurant located in Connaught Place. The waiters began to bring a variety of sides and filled our plates with small portions of each. At first it seemed peculiar, and I thought to myself whether the small portions were enough to fill up my empty stomach. Then the waiters kept bringing more and more small portions of food! They continued to do this as we ate, almost making sure we had our plates full at all times which I found quite funny. The 3 other students who I shared a table with would constantly stop eating to simply say “wow” and praise what we were eating. Unfortunately I do not know what majority of the food that I was eating is called, besides naan, and lady fingers.
Another similar occasion occurred at Chandni Chowk in northern Delhi. It was a street restaurant that served a variety of Parathas, which is wheat flatbread with food stuffed in it. We started off with pea parathas followed by potato, green chili, cauliflower, and a few that I was not able to guess what they were. We were also served a few sides and two dipping sauces. One was a delicious sweet, yet spicy banana sauce. What really left my mouth watery were the two different sweet parathas we had last. In particular, there was a delicious milk paratha that left me and many of the students in awe. It is definitely one of the most delicious things I have tasted in my life thus far.
Now that I have gotten a small glimpse of the culinary in New Dehi, I am excited for what the food will be like in my next destinations. India is such a large country that is diverse many aspects; culture, religion and especially food!