Food!

Most of you should have know this would be a subject at some point in time. The food here is not at all what I expected. Because we are in a very popular tourist location, food is easy to come by, and good (meaning safe to eat.) We do tend to eat at several places over and over because of their reputation, but the selections are great. The thought process in India at restaurants are completely different from that of the US and most other western countries. Lets talk about taking orders. Most places will prepare you anything they can if you just ask, weather it is on the menu or not. This comes in very handy when nothing on the menu looks good or you are not sure what it is. Most of the restaurants use the old fashion ticket books like they used in the diners, only here they always write your order down in at least duplicate and sometimes triplicate. Not really sure why they do that, except that the book comes with carbon paper so they must feel they need to use it. You might be thinking well, one copy is for the cooks, the other copy is for the cashier and one copy for us. Not the case at all, because when you ask for the bill (they don't know what the word check is), they come back over to your table and rewrite everything down that you ordered on another ticket to give you with prices on it. This is almost always consistent in every restaurant. The next thing that they do here which is actually very nice is they make everything to order - and I mean everything. If you order coffee they ask if you want a pot or a cup and they brew just a pot or a cup, and if two of you order the same thing, they would brew one cup or one pot at a time so you get them at different times. Food comes out the same way. They make one dish at a time, so if you are there and the restaurant is very busy, expect to wait up to 1 hour before your food comes out. Nothing is premade. They don't mass chop veggies or have large pots of curry waiting for the customer, everything is prepared per order. We ordered a starter one night, but there were several of us at the table so we ordered two, and they came out one at a time, and even the entrees come out usually one at a time. So everyone gets their food at a different time. They do focus on one table so usually things come out right after the other, but still not at the same time. The advantage is the food is always hot, usually to hot for me to start, and you know its fresh. They use a type of bread which would best be described as a tortillas here and of course I'm eating tons of those, they are great dunked in the curry sauces. They can have on the menu 6 different types of sauces and if you ask them what they are they always say gravy. Even if you point to different ones they say "gravy"! So far there is nothing I haven't tried that I didn't like, some I don't think I would order again, but I have been able to eat everything I order. I have stayed away from meat, except I have tasted when Daren orders fish, but that's the only meat he eats. The fish are caught here on a daily basis, so at dinner you know it is fresh. The catch is they put in on display at the front of the restaurant for you to see, and sometimes choose the fish you want to eat....yeah, I can't do that!
Fruit salads are very popular here, especially for breakfast and lunch, which usually is composed of pineapple, mango, banana, red banana and pomegranate. They also offer fruit juices and yes they are juiced to order with only fresh fruit.....nothing that was made in Brazil, pasteurized and shipped here six months ago!
So, unlike what I thought I was getting into, the food here is great and I'm eating plenty of it.
I was going through the blog yesterday and noticed a mistake on one of the pictures (Casey, you of all people should have caught the mistake!) The picture is of a plane that I said was taking me to India from Heathrow and it was a Qantas plane - on its way to Australia. I decided not to change the picture, but I do have one of the British Airways 747 that brought me here!