Play With Your Food

We're in South India now, and the food service here is just a little different. This is the land of no forks and knives, although you might get a small spoon. But, you are expected to eat with your hand - your right hand that is. We have hit several restaurants in the area of our hotel, including our own, although we have been avoiding that one since Geordie accidentally over-tipped. It set a precedent so when we have been there since we get over-attentive service and a waiter who hangs around after we have received the bill practically salivating. MInd you we have noticed that we are intiguing in most of the local restaurants where the waiters seem to enjoy standing next our tables watching us eat. A little unnerving, but we are coping.

Breakfast: We had our first South Indian Breakfast this morning - a Masala Dosai, which is a very large thin rice batter (I think) pancake with a filling of potato, onion and curry type flavourings along with four small pots of sauces to eat with it. Included in the sauces are a dal (split peas, but very thin), a coconutty, oniony flavoured white paste, a bright orange red sauce with a tomato base perhaps but spicy too, and a yellow-green sauce whose provenance I cannot explain, although it is tasty if also hot!

The point is to pour at least the dal or is it a sambar, onto your dosai, then place the other mixtures which are thicker, on the banana leaf provided (It's under the dosai), for dipping or mixing. With your fingers. Right hand only. It is hard to remember that, as I hold down one side with my left hand I suddenly remember to let go and do my best to tear the pancake with only my right hand.

We had coffee with it too - milk coffee which is served with a small metal cup, and a bigger open bowl. The coffee is poured from bowl to cup to bowl, repeatedly, ostensibly to cool the coffee although I think it also serves to mix the sugar in. Not being a fan of sweet coffee, I don't mind leaving the sugar in the bottom of the cup. The coffee has been tasty though, so no complaints.

Lunchtime: Here is where the thali comes to the fore. Usually the locals are provided with a large banana leaf which they first wet down, pouring the rest onto the table which I suspect sticks it to the surface. Then they are given dabs of diferent mixtures again, similar to the breakfast sauces although there are a few more - including a really sour yogourt which I can't bring myself to eat, and a raita of the same yogourt with slices of red onion. The sambar is the most liquid of the sauces. These dabs are provided by men who walk around with their containers, three of them attached and adding piles of the mixtures if you want more. It's all you can eat, by the way.

Onto the banana leaf is then piled a heap of steaming white rice, and a big poppadom is added as well (that's a crunchy yellow cracker like bread, a little spicy, very crispy). The trick is to mix the flavourings into the rice with your fingers, getting it good and saucy, then pinching up a pile with the fingertips and stuffing it into your mouth. The locals seem better at it than me, no doubt it's the practice, but we have been doing fine. I haven't yet dropped a heap onto my trousers. I watched a woman nonchalantly mixing everything, doing the mixing over and over until she seemed to have created an almost solid object to pop into her mouth. I'm not as efficient.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the first thing one does before eating is go to the hand washing facility and wash up. Everybody does it, so we have to remind ourselves to do it too. Don't want to look gauche.

One little thing - they don't seem to trust us. We have been getting what appears to be similar food as everyone else, but we are given ours on a metal platter, with a banana leaf cut to fit. We don't know for sure if ours is different - the dishes of savouries all look very similar to the rest but we just aren't getting the big banana leaf thing. I would prefer that because when you are finished you show it by folding your banana leaf at the centre rib, enclosing your mess and having a nice tidy package for the cleaning people to get rid of. Notice by the way how bio-friendly this is - everything is biodegradable, although I don't know how they get rid of the stuff - burning?, just dumped in the garbage?

Dinner is not different - it does seem that thalis are the order of the day at lunchtime while meals are smaller in the morning and evening. There are other choices of breakfast dishes too - iddlys which are small steamed rice puffs served with sambars, vadai which looks like a thick fried doughnut served with sambars again and no doubt things we have yet to identify.

It's all vegetarian too - lots of potatoes, cauliflower, carrot, onion, tomato, green beans and nary a bit of meat. Several restaurants in the area advertise non-veg so there are other choices, but we haven't tried any. Another option is Chinese food - fried noodles, manchurian flavoured dishes, and several things which are named but also have added the number 65, such as Noodles 65. We have no idea what it is, although I suspect it's a flavouring, probably comes in a bottle, hence the ease of name, anything with sauce 65 being so identified.

We think we are losing a little weight finally - maybe there is something to this vegetarian thing, although I must say, almost all the flavours are very similar, a la curry. I think the variety comes in the degree of heat, and the hot, sweet, salty sour flavours.

This is definitely not a tourist town which explains the fact that the food is geared to the locals. Once we hit a beach town where tourists hang out we will again be able to get eggs, omelets, toast, maybe porridge (lots of that in the north), banana or honey or chocolate pancakes and mixtures thereof. It's not exactly like home but there is the sense of it being comfort food so occasionally one just has to have it.

We are heading to the tip of India tomorrow evening, to another nontourist town, so we will be continuing to eat thalis. Maybe tomorrow we will convince the restaurant to give us a real thali complete with banana leaf - if we point and insist. There is one advantage to the food here though - it's cheap. This morning's breakfast cost a grand total of 65 rupees - that's about $1.50, for two people, yes, 75 cents each. Oh and that was with two coffees for me and one for Geordie. We have paid as much as 150 rupees here too, so it's not always so cheap (smile - what makes $2.00 a person expensive?).

We will be searching out another restaurant tonight - we are trying all of them, so we are having fun. Tomorrow we don't leave town until 10:40 pmor whenever the train arrives after that (an hour or two?), so we still have time to get that real thali. No matter, my fingers are at the ready, as soon as I go clean them, so we will enjoy the food no matter what.