Dhaba food in Amritsar

Previous post in series is here..

We were about to have a late lunch after a lot of walking all through the morning. Walked through Golden temple, Jallianwalah Bhag memorial, Durgiana temple, then Gobindgarh fort and finally lunch at 1:45 in the afternoon.

Have already mentioned our first taste of Dhaba food (La Roma Dhaba which serves Maggi noodles that is apt for its name and the Shudh Dhaba right outside Golden temple the previous evening).

There is something to be said about the butter Naan in these Dhaba's. Just like the Sikh's go bathe in the water around the golden temple and come out pure at heart to worship god, the naan's in these dhabas take a dip in pure butter (I am sure there is a butter lake somewhere in that kitchen) and come out ready to make the hungry taster see god. One minute you see a bunch of naan in a basket and the next minute it disappears.. have never seen the kids eat so fast in my life! 

For the afternoon lunch we went to Bharwan dhaba. This one just one upped the Shudh dhaba when it came to the butteriness of the butter naan! it was spicy, fatty and just plain yummy. If you want to die happy, make sure your last meal is at this dhaba! 

After being stuffed to the throat with food, the waiter came and asked us about dessert. We asked him what was special and he knew how to hit my weak spots.. He said "we have mutka kulfi" and "phirini, which is a local delicacy".. we said "okay bring it" and there was a fight for the items across the table. It was that good.

We did however restrict ourselves to some limited sweets so we could move on. The plan was to do some shopping for clothes for the ladies and then go for a break at the hotel and if weather permitted, go see Sadda Pind. We were up for an interesting last evening at Amritsar. 

The Yellow Chilli next to Pathanjali...

On the recent India trip, we visited Amritsar for two days. It is a family deal now that we do a trip within a trip to go see a place that the four of us have never been to within India. This breaks the monotony of visiting the same relatives on a tight schedule in Chennai and Mumbai and flying back. It also gets us to interact with family in a "non-home" setting in India. 

This time it was Amritsar with my in-laws. As soon as we landed at the airport, the tour guide/ driver took us to the hotel which was 15 minutes from the airport. We checked in and the plan was to go to the Wagah border right away with a quick stop for lunch. 

For some reason, he decided that we should go to an upscale "bar" type place. Why, we dont know.. maybe he had a deal with the place. So we went to "The Yellow Chilli". It had Sanjeev Kapoors face everywhere and the ambience was definitely not a "family restaurant" one, but a couples place to get drunk. We were definitely the only family there and there were no kids in the place.

I amused myself by looking at the Pathanjali "super store" next to the restaurant. I did not know there were stores like this. Over the last year, have become a big fan of Pathanjali shampoos. Rate them highly right along Loccitane! I digress. Pathanjali products are great, but this post is about The Yellow CHilli. 

Once the menu items showed up at our table, we really didn't care what the restaurants customer base was. We were hungry and the food looked and tasted great!

Every item was better than the previous one or so it seemed. Then came the final dessert. This thing was downright divine! The hot/cold combination was amazing.

The video says it all..

We gupled the thing down and were off on a drive to the Wagah border. We also told our driver, "this was good.. but next time.. dhaba ka khana!"

Life without Maggi

Maggi is an inherent part of our diet right now! The Nestle made noodles are a favorite evening snack for kids at least once a week and also a dinner option for daddy and the kids at least once a week! 

Daddy is the Maggi expert and can make it in many different ways with any combination of vegetables, as a soup, just with enough water or cook it so that the "noodles don't stick to each other", depending on what the kids feel like on any given day.

When we come home after any all day outings, dinner is always Maggi, as it can be done by the time kids go take a shower. 

So it is a rude shock to see headline news that Maggi has lead and a lot more MSG in it than it is supposed to. Given Nestle is an international brand, the expectation was always that there will be "some" quality control. 

One good thing I do is to not use the Masala packet that comes with the noodles. Instead I use a combination of :

Salt + Sambar powder (made in India with my Grandma or mom's recipe) + turmeric powder + a small pinch of asafoedita (kids like it, I skip it)

and we save the masala packets. Think I have posted on this earlier as well. 

Given all the Maggi consumption, we have a drawer in the kitchen just dedicated to noodles and masala. Today I decided to go clean out the Maggi drawer and this is what I saw..

poured it on the ground and counted the packets to clear it out..

That was 670 packets of Maggi Tastemaker masala! This is just from Jan of this year. 

Going by some crude math, we would have possibly injested enough lead to make us brain dead for the next seven generations if the reports are true!

Then again, we do not know how much of the stuff is in the noodles. Will watch the reports. Maybe the New Jersey Nestle that imports it from India will do some spot checks?

It is also true that noodles (be it Maggi or Ramen) have a lot of wax in it.. so I do boil the noodles to remove the wax on occasion or dry roast it to get rid of the wax before using the noodles. 

Given the data, we are not an occasional noodle family! So we should take this seriously. In the meantime, we are going back to adai, dosai, kunukku for "tiffin" where possible.

When culture calls…

The blog is getting a series of travelogs, from the recent ?! Jaipur trip. Things have started to blur already and I have to go look at photo time stamps, to recollect what we did in those 4 days!

Day 1 was just landing there, visiting the city palace with a tour guide and having dinner at Choki Dhani.

Day 2 was spent going to Pushkar. It was a 2+ hour drive from Jaipur and the kids pretty much went on a fighting match right after we got into the van.

It was one of those days!

The adults in the van decided that we would physically separate the kids, by using daddy as a divider. That worked out well for all parties in the van, driver included, except for daddy!

Simply could not move as they slept with their mouths open, on either shoulder. 

There was really nothing scenic on the drive to Pushkar. A large man made lake near the town of Ajmer, which was full of garbage as far as the eye could see, and a temple that did not look that old.

It kooked more like a recent addition, within the last 100 years. I expected a temple that was a few thousand years old. It looked like a replica of the Mahalakshmi temple in Mumbai, without the beautiful ocean view in the backdrop. 

It definitely did not live up to the hype as a "one of a kind" temple for the creator, Brahma. Someone needs to build a better temple for the dude. Also the vendors outside the temple, both at the stores and the ones hawking stuff off their hands and shoulders, were not nice. They were rude and bitter, with all tourists. We were so turned off by the experience, that we did not bother to go take a look at the Pushkar lake behind the temple. 

Some temples give you goosebumps. Let's just say this was not one of them and leave it at that. We drove back and had to find lunch somewhere and this sign board caught our eye!

Now that our interest was piqued by the Sweaming Pool, a little closer inspection showed more details..

The kids who usually are very cranky when woken up in mid van sleep, were laughing at the prospect of having Tost and Burgar's. We were sold! 

So off we went to the counter of the Family Garden Restaurant and the kids got another education.

Now you try and explain a gramaphone record and a rotary phone to kids who think CD's are a relic! 

We paid, went inside the Family Garden and sat down to see if the food was going to be good..

When the food came, we were not disappointed! It was yummy. They made a very nice dal, jeera fried rice, nice rotis, gave us fresh dahi and some side dishes to go with the rotis. It was simple dhaba food that was delicious.

After a full meal, we got back to Jaipur and did a replay of the kids sleeping on my shoulder. There is a famous Mosque in Ajmer where everyone is allowed inside, but we passed on the chance.

I was wearing shorts and the kids were in skirts. Our driver mentioned that while everyone was okay to go inside and it was not restricted to Muslims, there were clothing restrictions. We had already had the same experience with clothing restrictions, a few days earlier in Kerala, where I had to go get a dhoti to enter a Hindu temple in Kalady, which was only restricted to Hindus in dhotis.

We then came back to our hotel, for a short break and also explored the hotel better. Looked at the artwork displayed in various entrances etc.

This one sculpture of dancing folks was really beautiful.

Then we went on, to an evening of Bangle shopping in the old city market of Jaipur aka "Jewelery" Bazaar. They say "Like a kid in a candy store", but I suggest that it should be replaced with "Like a girl in a bangle store" after going through this experience. 

Wife, MIL, Jr. and the Little one, spent a full hour in a bangle store, while my FIL and myself fidgeted patiently outside, saying polite "no"s to guys who were trying to sell us everything from hand puppets to Hello kitty bedroom slippers, all at discounted prices.

While this was going on, did take some pictures of the bangles from the displays outside the next store, with the iPhone. My camera was given the equivalent of a "gag" order by the ladies when it came to shopping. A 5D Mark II around the guys neck, ruins the bargaining power of the ladies, or so they tell me. 

Finally almost an hour and a half later, the ladies walked out with a small subset of the bangles they started out to buy. We were really not sure if we got ripped off, but the smiles on their faces was priceless!

Then to round up day 2, we walked quite a distance to LMB which is short for Lakshmi Mishtan Bandar (sweet shop). Walking into the shop was like walking into heaven. 

There is a quote on the walls of the Cupertino Library from Jorge Luis Borges that says "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of Library".

Here is my quote. "I have always imagined Heaven will be a kind of Mishtan bandar".

We were ushered into an AC hall through the sweet shop to get our dinner. The service was nice, but the dinner got mixed reviews from the family members based on what dish they ordered. The side dishes and Naan and paratha were excellent. The chaat items were okay (based on what they said). 

We went back to get some rest and get ready for more sight seeing on day 3, a post for another day...

Village Safari, Rajasthani style

Let us say that you want to see wild animals in the wild but in a safe way?  What do you do? You go on a wild animal safari. You are in a caged jeep, the animals are doing what they do.. you watch, hoping there is minimal impact to them from the jeep and come back home. A lot of us have done that..

Now, lets say you are in a place that is not your natural habitat. You want to see the people of that place and culture, but in a very controlled fashion. How do you go about doing that without having to deal with a lot of unknowns?  You go to a Village safari, at least that is what I am calling it. 

A Rajasthani town created for tourists where you get to see a village in action with some added entertainment. Add to this an authentic dinner in a shared setting and night lights, and what you have is Disneyland meets Burning man. It goes by "Choki Daani" and it is guranteed fun for the whole family.

I have always wanted to go to Burning man to take pictures. My family thinks I have some deviant gene that was part of a mutation experiment done after I came to the USA.

That said, Yes! I still want to visit Burning man someday. Maybe after retiring. I digress again..

The whole lantern lighting and bright colors, dancers, camel rides and gigantic props made this place have a surreal feel to it. There are not that many pictures because I wanted to take photographs without the flash and given the natural light was bright only in certain places it reduced a lot of options.

Also the fixed fee at the entrance and "no need for tips" boards everywhere made it easy for us as tourists to enjoy this place. That said San went and bought some "kurthis" in the crafts section of the village only to realize the very next day that she overpaid.. a lot! That overpayment did have some value, in that it provided comic relief to a van full of weary travellers on day 2. We did see some real art work. An old man making print blocks from wood. He was so fast it was unbelievable. 

We also saw how the "hand printed" sari's are made using natural vegetable dyes.

The dinner itself was interesting. Five types of Roti's, a few select Rajasthani dishes that we had never heard of, lots of sugar and Ghee (clarified butter) in everything, in short, an extremely delicious and unhealthy meal that still brings back great memories. Also thanks to the iPhone 5S and the willingness of the service staff to take pictures for you there is at least one grainy picture of the dinner.

The service staff guy says to me "I can take a picture for you". Gave him my cell phone and I am about to start explaining to him what to do and he goes "I know what to do on iPhone 5. Have taken lots of pictures for people. Please go sit down". These guys knew every type of cell phone camera. Guess that is a skill that comes in handy to keep the crowd moving fast.

The only thing I did not like was the turban. It was on his head and he put it on everyones head before taking the picture. It was a germ factory. It is a miracle that we came out of that place without head lice!

It started raining like crazy when we just finished the dinner. We barely made it to our vehicle before the roads started flooding! Never realized it rained like that in Rajasthan or that roads could be flooded so soon. It reminded me of those National Georgraphic Specials where the Kalahari desert has rivers flowing in it all of a sudden. 

Strongly recommended for an evening of fun and a great dinner.