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January 29, 2000 Southern India has proven to be a wonderful place to eat! I've been ordering mostly vegetarian though I had one very excellent Chicken Tandoori (marinated in mild spices and yogurt and then roasted) in Chidambarum. Most restaurants proclaim either "veg" or "non-veg" but some boast both "veg AND non-veg" food. Roadside vendors fry up fresh chickpea doughballs, savory pancakes, deep fried mushrooms and other vegetables. Bananas, pineapples, pomegranates, and papaya are easy to find and very cheap as roadside snacks. On country roads I often stop for a green coconut, served with a straw. When you're finished with the water, you hand the coconut back to the vendor who wields a large metal machete with a hooked tip rather frighteningly but expertly to cut it in half so that the jelly can be scooped out and eaten. The day begins with a difficult choice. It's easy to get a western breakfast in the hotel restaurants, which list TOAST BUTTER JAM and OMELET as well as PORRIDGE and CORN FLAKES WITH MILK on the menu. The omelet is likely to be full of sauteed onions though, unless you tell them you want plain eggs. I like having a western breakfast now and then but they're really better here at idly or pongal. Idly is a steamed white cake with a taste and texture much like a thick pancake without the crust, served with a savory sauce. Pongal is a mild savory blob of rice dotted with whole peppercorns, also served with a sauce. You can also order a dosa, or crepe, on the side. Another nice option is curd (yogurt) with fruit. And I've had absolutely no trouble getting coffee here, but black tea, called "chai" is the more popular drink. "Marsala chai," or spiced tea (marsala simply means "spiced") with hot milk can be bought everywhere. Every concoction is different, and I knew about it from trendy coffee shops in San Francisco long before I thought about visiting India. For dinner, Marsala Dosa's are my standard order. These are really beautiful French-style crepes served on a tin plate lined with a banana leaf. The crepe is, without exception, perfectly browned and slightly crisp. It's sometimes folded into a triangle, more often though it's just rolled gently over the filling, overlapping the plate on both sides and enclosing a spiced potato mixture. The waiter, before putting it down on the table, uses a bit of flair to knock the overlapping sides over onto the plate so that the crepe won't touch the table. The dish is accompanied by two small metal bowls of savory sauce and coconut curry. Here in southern India everything is served on a banana leaf which make beautiful and sanitary disposable plates! Unless you're at a westernized restaurant you won't get any cutlery. Using your right hand (NEVER your left) you pull apart the crepe, mopping up the filling and dipping it in the chutney. Fresh juices are available everywhere, and are either cut up and put in a blender or hand cranked through a 5-foot tall heavy-duty machine with rotors that can crush a whole pineapple or piece of sugar cane completely flat! It's important to tell the vendors not to mix the juices wih water or ice, of course, because of contamination. Other drinks include the usual soda pops, which I generally avoid, but there's a mango drink called Maaza that comes in a soda bottle that, as far as I can tell, is really pure mango juice. Of course there's no ingredient listing on the bottle. There's no shortage of satisfaction for the sweet tooth. Candies made from boiled milk resemble a kind of crumbly fudge, and small cakes nestled in crinkled paper cups just ooze with syrup. Sweet shops are a popular stop for breaks, and one sees a lot of businessmen standing around them with a bowl full of dried sweetened fruits and crisps resembling cereal, accompanied by aluminum tumblerfuls of masala chai. After a hard hot day of riding I really do enjoy a cold beer, but that's not an easy find in Tamil Nadu. The entire state used to be dry. Long ago, the women of the state rallied to get alcohol banned when the men would get paid and go immediately to the bar and spend their checks getting drunk. The state spent a long time dry, but the law was repealed about 10 years ago. The habit (or non-habit) stuck, and it's still unusual for restaurants to serve alcohol, even when I've asked for "special tea" (the code for beer served in a tea kettle and cup) they've said they don't have any. The solution is to ask the "boy" at the hotel to go get me a beer (and toilet paper and other foreign things), then pour it in my opaque water bottle, and take it to the restaurant with me. Wow! I feel like I'm doing something really sneaky! Prices in rupees: Marsala dosa
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