After moving to London few months back I had an apprehension that I might miss all the spice and taste of the Indian food in the land where bread is part of all the three meals of the day. After spending more that 7 years in the city of Gardens in India, dosas, idlis & vadas were pretty much the most common and easily accessible means of breakfast and snacks for me. The memory of visiting places like Anand sweets, A2B, Karthik sweets and of course all * Sagars is still so fresh in my mind. Having eaten so regularly in these places made me believe some kind of connoisseur of south Indian food. But moving to a country where the word "royal" is kind of attached to each and everything I always wondered if I would ever be sharing my table in a restaurant with other patrons enjoying these Indian delicacies.
But to be honest I haven't really missed Indian food as much as I was anticipating. England has so much connection with India and its food, that in every nook and cranny of the London streets you would find some or other restaurant that boastfully serves Indian food. And to my surprise over last few months I have realised that on most occasions English people outnumbers Indians or Asians in some of the finest of Indian restaurants in London. In search of some select Indian sweets, I went to a place called Southall which is mostly crowded by Indian people, food, banks, stores, cd shops and apparel stores making it look like a perfect commercial street (in bangalore) view. In the chilly winter night of December last year, I managed to spot an Indian sweet mart that was famous for its hot served Jalebis and Samosas. Its probably hard to believe but that night my dinner included couple of samosas and lots of Jalebis :)
After satiating my hunger for Indian sweets, it was time to find out some Gujrati special food in London. And then with some of my friends in London we managed to find out place called Wembley which is more popular at least among the Indian community for Indian (Gujrati) food than the newly built football stadium (2007) which is supposed to be the second largest stadium in Europe with 90,000 capacity. The streets, roads and the shops over here are so Indianized that the public administration and governance authorities had to put sign board of "please do not spit paan over here" on the walls of the sideways :) But Indians will always be Indians :) Anyway with my Indian friends who were quite familiar with that place and some of the good Indian restaurants we managed to get into a Gujrati restaurant which serves lunch buffet. And the most interesting part of the buffet for me was Dhoklas and butter milk. I remember during my school days dhoklas with fried green chillies used to be so attractive and mouthwatering for me. The tadka of red chillies and aroma of coriander leaves garnished on top of dhoklas have been one of my favourite Indian snacks. I thoroughly enjoyed the dhoklas in that restaurant and the surprise package of the meal was Shrikhand; another mouthwatering sweet of India. It was indeed very scrumptious food that I had experienced in London.
Days have passed by and my search for finding more Indian speciality food is still on the high and off late my recent discovery was Chennai Dosa. Perfect place to experience dosai, vadai, idlis and masala tea. And good thing I liked about that place was that the food was light on my stomach as well as wallet :)
But to be honest I haven't really missed Indian food as much as I was anticipating. England has so much connection with India and its food, that in every nook and cranny of the London streets you would find some or other restaurant that boastfully serves Indian food. And to my surprise over last few months I have realised that on most occasions English people outnumbers Indians or Asians in some of the finest of Indian restaurants in London. In search of some select Indian sweets, I went to a place called Southall which is mostly crowded by Indian people, food, banks, stores, cd shops and apparel stores making it look like a perfect commercial street (in bangalore) view. In the chilly winter night of December last year, I managed to spot an Indian sweet mart that was famous for its hot served Jalebis and Samosas. Its probably hard to believe but that night my dinner included couple of samosas and lots of Jalebis :)
After satiating my hunger for Indian sweets, it was time to find out some Gujrati special food in London. And then with some of my friends in London we managed to find out place called Wembley which is more popular at least among the Indian community for Indian (Gujrati) food than the newly built football stadium (2007) which is supposed to be the second largest stadium in Europe with 90,000 capacity. The streets, roads and the shops over here are so Indianized that the public administration and governance authorities had to put sign board of "please do not spit paan over here" on the walls of the sideways :) But Indians will always be Indians :) Anyway with my Indian friends who were quite familiar with that place and some of the good Indian restaurants we managed to get into a Gujrati restaurant which serves lunch buffet. And the most interesting part of the buffet for me was Dhoklas and butter milk. I remember during my school days dhoklas with fried green chillies used to be so attractive and mouthwatering for me. The tadka of red chillies and aroma of coriander leaves garnished on top of dhoklas have been one of my favourite Indian snacks. I thoroughly enjoyed the dhoklas in that restaurant and the surprise package of the meal was Shrikhand; another mouthwatering sweet of India. It was indeed very scrumptious food that I had experienced in London.
Days have passed by and my search for finding more Indian speciality food is still on the high and off late my recent discovery was Chennai Dosa. Perfect place to experience dosai, vadai, idlis and masala tea. And good thing I liked about that place was that the food was light on my stomach as well as wallet :)
So far it has been a wonderful experience and my apprehension of missing out on Indian food is slowly declining. My next target is to find some spicy taste of Indian chaats in the subtle streets of London. Expecting your comments and experiences on Indian food in different parts of world where you had travelled in past.
~S.K
