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muckefuckLakshmi and I left work together and got to the restaurant 15 minutes early, so I took her to Patel Brothers, where she could act as my guide. Monshu and I had been there about a month ago and were surprised by the sheer number of things we couldn't identify, particularly among the produce. She talked me into buying a big bag of banana chips. Healthy snack, right? Except they're fried in palm oil and covered in salt. Oh, well, I tried.
We returned to the restaurant exactly on time. No one there, so we stood on the corner and waited. The half-dozen guests trickled in over the next half-hour and Lakshmi began to lead us through the menu. You think I'm bad at a restaurant? She kept telling people what they were not getting, because it wasn't what the place specialised in. (She did relent and order the chana batura, because two people asked for it.) In the end, we just put her in charge of all the ordering.
We ended up with two dosai (butter masala and a lacy one whose name I forget) and two uthappam (one with peas and tomatoes, the other with peas and onions), plus enough sambar and coconut chutney for twice our number. This was after the two kinds of iddly, the rasa vada, and an appetiser basket full of deep-fried North Indian standards--like samosas and paneer pakora--that someone slipped in an order for while Lakshmi wasn't paying attention. Oh, and mango lassi all around (except for a lone, mocked Diet Coke) and almond pudding with vanilla ice cream for desert (she wanted to order a serving for each of us, but we convinced her to let us double up), which put paid to any possibility of moving on to a sweet shop.
My doppelganger ordered a chai, so we decided to call him "Mr Chai". The Hindi version of this, Shreeman Chai, sent Lakshmi into paroxysms of laughter no matter how many times we said it, so we kept going on about Shreeman Chai's mad turntable skilz taking the hip hop world by storm until she begged us to stop--all of this, naturally, to a soundtrack of giddy Bollywood tunes that filled the near-empty restaurant.
We returned to the restaurant exactly on time. No one there, so we stood on the corner and waited. The half-dozen guests trickled in over the next half-hour and Lakshmi began to lead us through the menu. You think I'm bad at a restaurant? She kept telling people what they were not getting, because it wasn't what the place specialised in. (She did relent and order the chana batura, because two people asked for it.) In the end, we just put her in charge of all the ordering.
We ended up with two dosai (butter masala and a lacy one whose name I forget) and two uthappam (one with peas and tomatoes, the other with peas and onions), plus enough sambar and coconut chutney for twice our number. This was after the two kinds of iddly, the rasa vada, and an appetiser basket full of deep-fried North Indian standards--like samosas and paneer pakora--that someone slipped in an order for while Lakshmi wasn't paying attention. Oh, and mango lassi all around (except for a lone, mocked Diet Coke) and almond pudding with vanilla ice cream for desert (she wanted to order a serving for each of us, but we convinced her to let us double up), which put paid to any possibility of moving on to a sweet shop.
My doppelganger ordered a chai, so we decided to call him "Mr Chai". The Hindi version of this, Shreeman Chai, sent Lakshmi into paroxysms of laughter no matter how many times we said it, so we kept going on about Shreeman Chai's mad turntable skilz taking the hip hop world by storm until she begged us to stop--all of this, naturally, to a soundtrack of giddy Bollywood tunes that filled the near-empty restaurant.