WotD: sidewalk (AE), pavement (BE)

1. das Trottoir, der Bürgersteig
2. het trottoir
3. la acera, la banqueta, el andén
4. la vorera
5. le trottoir, la banquette
6. y pafin
7. an cosán
8. chodnik
9. 보도 (步道)
10. 人行道 rénxíngdào

Notes: Sidewalks have become ubiquitous relatively recently, so some languages show a lot of variation. 1. German is particularly notorious in this respect, with a half dozen terms in general use; I've limited myself to the usual word in Baden (a French borrowing, unsurprisingly) and what I take to be the most common Schriftdeutsch expression. 3. Banqueta is specifically Mexican; andén is common in Central America whereas elsewhere this tends to mean "(train) platform". 5. Banquette survives in this meaning only in Louisiana. 7. From cos "leg" and the usual word for "footpath" as well.

"The ultimate cuisine of all dishes"

How can it be that I've let a year go by (almost to the day) since last gorging on chicken charga at Sabri Nehari? Call it the "next door" syndrome: Oh, it's right next door, so I can go there any time I want. (This also handily explains why I've never been to the Leather Museum and Archives in two years of living here, even though it literally is next door.) IME, the only remedy to next door syndrome is tourists. Fortunately, this works even if the tourists are only from the other side of the city.

Last week, South Siders mollpeartree was kind enough to inform me that she and princeofcairo would be taking a couple recently relocated to Bridgeport up for a visit and asked if they could pick me up some cookies from Mughal Bakery. I told her I wasn't about to sit at home with my feet up while they all guzzled lassis, so princeofcairo offered to let me pick the restaurant. I tentatively introduced the idea of chicken charga and it possessed him like a demon. Once we were seated, I announced that we should order the chicken immediately, since the preparation time was close to 45 minutes. "Let's get two," he said. (Keep in mind that we had five people at the table, two of whom were ordering their own chicken dishes.)

That is how it came to pass that, an hour later, he and I were slicing the spare bird into roughly equal halves, rolling them in foil, and packing them up for transport home. (So sad that monshu already had dinner in the oven before I could show him the booty.) Of course, a trip to Devon without a visit to Patel Brothers is like an Indian dish without onions. I dearly wanted to watch the expressions of the newbies as the reality of whole cloves at $1/oz. sunk in, but I recognised the folly of trying to navigate the bazaar on crutches, snatched the saffron and black cardamom the Old Man requested, and went to the snack shop on the corner to wait.

So it was that I got to satisfy my curiosity about Patel's Café, the newest and shiniest jewel in the crown of the mighty Patel empire. My eye never made it to the end of the beverages list, so firmly did the words "chickoo smoothie" seize it, which is just as well, since when mollpeartree came to join me, she found that the coffee bar was not fully operational, so such exotic names as "Madras coffee" will have to remain only that until we can make a return trip--at which time, I will have to make sure to leave enough room after dinner for a cone of ice cream in Indian flavours. (How long have I been begging for a local answer to Bombay Ice Cream Parlour? Too long, world!)