Food...and Drink

Travelers all have their favorite haunts when it comes to food. Sometime it depends on the bargain price. The rock bottom is food from the stalls, where you stand and eat off a banana leaf. I like to sit down at a table. The stall scene is balancing your food on the left hand and digging into rice and one of a dozen gravies with your right. People, who like to demonstrate their expertise with chop sticks at Chinese restaurant, will enjoy this exercise. If they do it expertly, they can gross out the uninitiated, which includes me. Personally I am fond of silverware. In Kodaikanal I’ve found several places I like to eat…and a few where I don’t.

Down on PT Road you find dozens of shops selling gifts and antiques, and several eateries. On Sunday, it is the site of the weekly market where the country people sell their produce and wares. The road gets it name from the great Tamil poet Tyagaraiar. That’s why they call it PT Road. A favorite place to eat is the Cloud Street Café and Restaurant. If you have an envelope of money for me, I’ll pick it up there. Word gets around and you see travelers from many countries. Sharath takes the morning shift and his wife, Tanya takes the evening. When I first showed up, Tanya’s UK English, as a first language, made me decide that if the food was half as good as her English, I would become a regular. Sharath comes from Goa and speaks softly. PT Road can get noisy especially on market day and so between my hearing and his accent, listening takes longer. His ear is more sophisticated and he understands that an “American breakfast” consists of bacon, eggs (soft and sunny side up,) toast with butter and strawberry jam, and to top it off, a pile of French fries. While I waited for coffee, I browsed the bookshelves. The paper backs run from Maxim Gorky to Louis L’Amour. The restaurant is clean and well lighted by day. All bets are off as to power outages in India therefore at night you might dine by candle light. The pasta is good but when I wasn’t all that hungry in the evening I’d settle for an “Israeli salad.” Tanya has made several trips to Israel and learned food preparation there. I spend about four dollars for the breakfast and other meals run a little less. They make lassi, a mixture of yogurt, a dash of salt, more than a dash of sugar, and you cut it with water until you can suck it through a straw. All this is run though a blender and normally it is cool and so refreshing if you’ve been off on a walk.

Someplace I don’t like to eat is a stainless steel place open 24 hours a day called Goldan Parks. It is non-veg and the waiters speak pretty good Tamil. They can screw up an order about as well as the best of them and I doubt if they’ve washed the windows since they built the hotel on top of which the café perches. The hotel is nice looking, the restaurant is well designed, but maintenance and trained personnel are something in India’s future.

But back on PT Road there is The Tibetan Brothers Café. I think one of the brothers has since opened his own place but the brother left is talkative and friendly. If you are really hungry, he serves plain rice with beef curry and a condiment. It’s a good idea to buy a bottle of water and with coffee that comes to about two dollars, twenty-five. The food is spicy but then you are supposed to drink a gallon of water a day or some such.

The owner was born in Tibet and he and the family made a break for the south in 1963 when he was 13. They came through the passes riding sherpas. I haven’t found out why he couldn’t walk but it may have been the risk of altitude sickness. I’ll try his English on the question.

There are not many Tibetans here but I speak to them when we meet and they always flash a smile and speak.

If I’m not up for Tanya’s Israeli salad but still want something light, I eat at the Tava Café. It is a basement affair and totally vegetarian. I ate the first thing I saw at the top of the menu called Dahl Makhani. Nothing to do with Donald McDonald’s. It’s a small serving of beans and lintels, a side of thin sliced red onions with a squeeze of lime, and a mango chutney. You need to order one or two paratas (fried bread) and of course lassi to drink and you don’t walk away hungry. Especially after the second lassi. The chutney seems to have been made in with a flail. There are broken seeds in it and it reminds me of a very flavorful condiment with bones.

I’m not interested in food fads but even before I came to India, I noticed I liked several vegetarian meals. Pinto beans and corn bread lead off the list. Since they use the worst grade of meat in enchiladas why bother? Just have cheese filling. I could think of some others were I to take the time but consider that the Indians have been eating meatless for a few thousand years and they know how to make food taste good. There must be about a dozen ingredients in the sauces but the flavor is good and only rarely have I had to back off from the spice.

I’ve probably written about the string bean pepper. Just think of those cross sections as hatching cobra eggs. You bite them; they bite you and a liter of water is not an antidote. You are going to burn. So you watch for them and fish them out. Life returns to 98.4°F.

Days off are interesting. The Moslems take off Friday, the Jews Saturday, the Christians call Sunday the Sabbath, and I think that the Hindu’s call for a day of rest on Monday. Haven’t heard form the Buddhists, but the Tibetan Brothers does close for certain celebrations. The Dali Lama’s birthday being one. Then the Cloud Street closes on Tuesday. Tanya and Sharath call a harbor day for the café. Their reasoning is that most of the power outages come on Tuesday.

So on Tuesday morning I climb the hill to the Carlton, Kodaikanal’s five star hotel. Generally speaking only guest eat in the dining room but they let in at least one townie on Tuesday.

The dining room is off white with dark wood pillars and beams. Of course there are table clothes and soft napkins. The waiters are dressed in dark suits with ties. They wear shoes with heels that sound a subdued click when walking. The waiters don’t move unless they have a destination and while no one runs, they certainly move out smartly.

There is an Indian buffet laid out each Tuesday morning but I order coffee first and then a tomato and mushroom cheese omelet with toast. In every café in India I’ve been in they serve coffee in small cup seemingly designed for a little girl’s tea party. The Carlton has American sized cups and excellently brewed coffee. The bill is about six dollars but that includes all the coffee you can drink and plenty of time to read or to just watch other guests and staff. There is a second place where food is served. This is out on a veranda and this is more what-you-see-is-what-you-get buffet. It seems to be a package deal affair. I’ve seen it used primarily for conferences.

The dining room crowd is young. Not many grandparents, often children, and the wives seldom wear saris. They dress in slacks and blouses, casual but dignified. There may be a change in the air. Often (most of the time) when I meet someone, I’m first ask where I’m from; secondly, if I’m a tourist, and then nearly always, do you have your family with you? The Indians leave only the servants behind and years ago they sometime took them. They needed someone to order around. It is not uncommon to see eight or ten in a party with ages to near zero to my age. How odd, they think, that I travel by myself. The dining room crowd travel with family but it is parents and children and seldom more. I wonder if it is a matter of that this family lives away from the ancestral home. The Indian professionals have moved to and with the job. The extended family is at the old home. Just a guess.

On Sunday PT Road becomes a market. Both sides of the road are for selling, the center for walking, and for dogs, and trucks and motorcycles. Since the cows would sample the wares, they are excluded. Private automobiles merge with the crowd but I can’t believe that cab drivers would be so silly. On past and down the road from the Tibetan Brothers, there is an acre and a half which has concrete pads for traders who want a way to run up a plastic awning and stay off the ground, mud or dust. Last market day I walked into this area because a full-sized truck had got itself mired among the road traffic and could hardly move. By going into the market I planned to pass him and go on to the library, which is still further down hill. Something distracted me (there is much to be distracted by) and when I looked back at the truck, he had moved forward and again I did not want to squeeze past him. I wanted to walk around him. So I took in the acre “plaza.” For the most part, the stalls are selling produce. I can’t think of any produce that you could find in Sitka that you couldn’t find here.

I saw a fellow selling sugar cane. I haven’t had sugar cane since I was a kid so I bought a peeled length and bit in to a disappointment. The farmer had cut it too soon and while there was water enough, the sugar content was very low. I found a deserving vendor and after cutting off my gnawings, I gave it to him. Long ago, I read that sugar cane comes from India. Through the trade route west, the crusaders picked it up and took it to Europe. Sugar has been rotting teeth from that day to this. The stuff we had in Texas when I was in grade school was better. In Puerto Rico there are small cane presses that crush the cane over a block of ice. The drink is delicious.

The small farmers harvest on Saturday and ride busses, trucks, cabs, or anything else that will move and haul stuff. There are a few people selling clothes, a few hardware, and some sold dried fish. One stall sold live (but just barely) catfish. After market day, my Tibetan friend always has mutton on hand. How that’s brought in and sold, I haven’t found out. That could be an early morning transaction. It was now getting on toward midday. But I did finally find a stall with fresh meat hanging. They didn’t need a sign; they laid the heads of the kids on the counter. I don’t know if the heads can be used for food but I got a twinge of homesickness. That beautiful meat wanted a pit with mesquite coals at the bottom, a grill about three feet above, and a lid to keep the smoke in. I stopped off to talk. I don’t know how much of what I said jumped the language barrier but we parted smiling. Next week, I need to find out who their buyers are.

At day’s end there is an exodus back to the communities that lie along the road system. You don’t take coals to Newcastle so quite a lot stock gets dumped. In one pile I saw a bushel of okra lying beside the road. Of course nobody knows how to fry okra properly but along with that goat, if you could find some slow-boiled pintos, some cornbread, and fried okra…… The cows converge and get a good meal and by sunup, the city sends in sweepers to clean the road and the plaza. Everything is waiting for next week. I’m thinking, I’m thinking, and wonder if Tanya would take on the experiment of a mess of fried okra. Now that would elevate Kodaikanal a few more feet closer to Heaven if she did.

I suspect that this article could be updated from time to time. I can’t think how to do it but yesterday was an example.

I was on my way to lunch and was walking on the best sidewalk in town (it was the one where I fell on my face but that was only one hole and the sidewalk may be 300 yards long.) This is the sidewalk that runs along Anna Salai or Bazaar Road and is Main Street in Kodaikanal. I saw a very old man carrying a Kelty pack. I stopped him and complemented him on his choice of equipment. He said in very good English that he bought it in San Diego and that although he loved India, he couldn’t wait until he would fly out to his American home. His name was Kasi and he was born in a village near Cape Cormorin, the place of the Sunrise. To make the story of a too short of an afternoon shorter, Kasi and I had some talking to do. He was a computer science who had studied at Stanford and taught at McGill and was now retired. I said he was old. He was born two years after me. Because of his youth he walked my legs off around the lake while we ate “Asian apples” which have a local name of custard apples but since they are local and grow nowhere else in India, Asian apple will do. We settled many of the world’s problems, Indian ones any way. He had no suggestions for the Bush Administration. So when we parted down by the lake bus stand, which is where the demonstration was to take place, I still hadn’t had lunch and it was about five. I was more interested in water but put both off and went to the cyber café and posted an article on the blogsite.

That morning I had met a couple, Brent and Shelly, from Seattle and they suggested that I meet them and others for drinks at 6:30 at the Carlton. That sounded good. By the time I was done with the internet, I had time for a bottle of water at the Cloud Street Café and then walked over to the hotel. Once I located the bar, I found some of the crowd from the café there and ordered a glass of red zinfandel. I was looking for burgundy but having never heard of the red side of the zinfandel family, I decided to try something new. It could be like the custard apple. You’ve got to come to the Palani Hills to find it.

The bar was, not surprising, very tastefully decorated. The bartenders were smartly dress and along with the wine, they brought something like sunflower seeds and salted potato chips with no curry powder. I was getting hungry. So while I met Sharon from Jacksonville, Florida and others, I made it a point to keep the potato chips within reach. We were joined by others and I was having a fine time talking over building with Brent, a carpenter, I’d met that morning. The potato chips were running low so when the bartender delivered other drinks, I asked for more. By the way, the wine was good. It tasted very much like burgundy. The bartender came back and brought Brent his beer and began pouring another. “Who is that far?” I asked and was told it was for me, who was far from finished with my wine. I told the bartender potato chips, not Kingfisher beer, and Brent smoothed the situation by saying he’d take the open bottle. I had to keep in mind that the Cloud Street closed at eight or eight thirty and so if I began a retreat about 7:30 I’d be about right for a plate of pasta. So Brent and I built a few more houses and the time ticked on. I got up and went to the bar to pay. It took a few minutes to pull up the paperwork, which had a thirty plus rupee tax onto a Rs.250 (something like $7 U.S.) glass of wine. That plate of delicious pasta that I would eat later would run about Rs.100. So this is not an every evening thing that I get to build houses over a coffee table so I gave the bartender a Rs.500 note and he passed it on to his assistant along with the paperwork and this was put into a leather binder and the assistant disappeared out the door. I waited. After nearly five minutes, I asked where my change was. There were about ten people in the bar and if their drinks were as expensive as mine, how would they make change for the lot of them? Again, where’s my change? The bartender and another assistant followed by me, went out of the bar, across the lobby, and into the dining room, where the waiters tried to seat me. These were the guys I see every Tuesday morning and we passed pleasantries because I was not going to follow the bartender through the kitchen doors. I needed the Hello and How are you, sirs just for a reality check. The money came back through the swinging doors. I took two hundred and left the rest for a tip and walked back to say good byes in the bar. I could see breaking a five hundred rupee note would pose a difficulty for a street vendor but a five star hotel with prices to back it up……….? I love India!
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