4. Eating my first authentic Indian Meal

My Dad is Indian. I spent a year living with my Indian relatives in America. The favourite dish in the UK is curry. Despite this it may surprise you to know that I’ve never eaten a proper Indian curry. The stuff that you get back home is a kind of bastardised version developed for European appetites and the stuff my Dad and my relatives make always seems a bit… Well I guess the word is “muted”.

So we decided to go in search of an authentic Indian restaurant and check out the chow. After searching around Little India for a while we stumbled across a quaint looking place called Ghandi Restaurant. It was full of locals so we thought that was as good as any Mitchellin awarded place.

We were told just to sit anywhere and a sheet of banana leaf was placed in front of both of us. I was going to ask for a menu but before I could a nice gentleman carrying a big bowl of boiled rice came up to us and said simply “Rice?” We nodded and a couple of big scoops were slapped onto each of the banana leaves. He walked off despite our confused looks and returned shortly with three moderately sized silver containers and planted a spoonful of lime pickle, aloo (spiced potato) and a sort of coconut cabbage onto the leafy plate and walked off again.

The bloke who had originally told us to sit down then arrived at the table carrying two popadums, two silver cups and a silver jug full of water. We had still yet to say anything! His next line was a classic.

“Do you want lamb, chicken or mutton?” That was the extent of the entire menu but we were not put off. His accent was so think and difficult to understand that Isla said, “Yes, I’ll have the lime chicken please”. After sorting out the translations we decided to each have the chicken (without lime) which arrived on a little plastic plate and was cooked in a masala type sauce. It tasted great and as there were no spoons or forks to hand we tucked in with our fingers which seemed to be the done thing.

When we had eaten everything on our leaves, the rice-man left a little note on our table which said “S$10 for 2 persons”. We washed our hands in one of the many sinks and took the note to the till. I handed over S$20 which I though was a steal for the food we had just eaten not to mention the fact that we were stuffed since the portions were very healthy. As we turned to leave (no pun intended) the man at the till called me back, “Boss, you left too much,” and handed me back S$10. I couldn’t believe it. Not only had we just had a tasty and filling meal but it had been in a restaurant and it was costing less that £1.75 a head. OK, so the menu was a bit lacking in choice but when you compare that to the fact that our breakfast in the hotel had cost us S$9 for a bowl of cereal… Well let’s just say I think I’ll do without my coco-pops tomorrow morning.