Still Savoring Indian
We’ve been dreaming about eating Indian food for months and now that we are finally here, it hasn’t disappointed. Cheap, flavourful, and varied, it’s fine dining on a college student budget.
We love saucy paneer and chicken masala, but we are also looking for unexpected surprises. Our first pick of a restaurant was all I hoped Indian food could be: a seafood restaurant with many dishes I had never heard. The crispy jumbo prawns had a light spicy sauce that reminded my of Thai food. We’ve taken to simply ordering random items off menus which led to the discovery of chicken muglai, stuffed potatoes with cashew gravy, and kadai mushrooms.
A couple of the tourist restaurants have taken a unique or fusion approach to their dishes. The Blue Planet at Palolem is an organic restaurant with many breakfast dishes including fruit salad with nuts, muesli with fruit and an Indian fruit pancake with orange date sauce or cinnamon yogurt. Lunch featured spinach lasagna with a side of avocado cream, a salsa with a consistency of creamed corn.
The Mango Tree in Hampi is nearly as special for it’s food as it is for it’s view. We walked through a banana plantation to find a restaurant with seating terraced into the side of a river valley and a huge mango tree providing shade over the entire area.
There, we tried our first thali, a tray of sauces, beans, rice and fried flat bread. Just when I thought I knew what was in the special curry I find another vegetable or nut. We may need to return to the Mango tree for further exploration of the menu.
I had been worried about tiring of one style of food quickly, but Janet was confident of her continued enthusiasm. She was right.