Taken in Bangkok in September of 2014.
This street vendor made crepes in the shape of various cartoon characters. The little drawings hanging from the front of the cart were the pictures you could select from. Or you could get a hot dog rolled in a crepe (pig in a blanket variation.)
Taken in October of 2012 in Phnom Penh.
Taken June 21, 2014 at Russell Market in Bangalore.
Taken in April of 2014 in Bangalore.
Taken on April 12, 2014 in VVpuram, Bangalore.
Made another trip to Bangalore’s Food Street in VVpuram (near Sajjan Rao Circle) for Rumali Roti and Mysore Masala Paneer Dosa. Both were excellent, and the street was packed with humans, bovines, canines, and felines all living harmoniously.
Taken in December of 2013 in Kuala Lumpur.
The other night, I ate banana flower for the first time–that I know of / remember–in two separate dishes. My wife and I were eating at the Oh! Calcutta on St. Mark’s Road in Bangalore, and we sampled banana flower croquettes as part of an assorted starter platter, and then I tasted some of my wife’s entrée, which was “dry cooked banana flower with coconut slivers.” The former was tasty, but so spicy that my undiscerning palate was incapable of learning anything about the flavor of this flower. The latter, much milder, dish tasted like a tasty take on mashed potatoes (again, to my unrefined palate.)
The picture above was taken in Malaysia, but banana flowers are present everywhere bananas grow (throughout much of tropics.)
Deceptively, the flower looks like it could be a deadly weapon–with its pointy, conical bloom.
Taken in December of 2013 in Kuala Lumpur
I took this on Jalan Alor, Kuala Lumpur’s famous food street. It was early, well before dark when the street gets thronged with hungry travelers. The fruit stands were just getting erected and the frog porridge was simmering.
Taken November 2013 at Queen’s Restaurant in Bangalore
I took this in a dimly lit Bangalore restaurant with a cellphone. Needless to say, it did not turn out well, but it’s something different for a Sunday. My chicken tikka came with a cool tomato lantern. It looks like something that fell out of Iron Man’s chest in this photo, but was a pleasant piece of ambiance in person.
Queen’s is a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Church St. I’ve found the food to be consistently good, though the decor might keep the faint-of-heart out.
Jeyuk-Chulpan with assorted sides.
I’ve been eating a lot at restaurants since we moved to Bangalore, both because it’s (usually) cheap and for the experience of it. I’ve eaten at enough places to have developed some favorites, but I try to keep broadening my experience by eating at as many new places as I can.
Today, I had a lunch experience that was new on two fronts. For one thing, it was a restaurant that’s new to me, but–for another–it was my first experience with Korean food as prepared in India. I’ve eaten at several Chinese restaurants in India, and, while the places I’ve tried were all pretty good, they were all distinctively Indo-Chinese. In other words, the dishes didn’t taste like they did in other places at which I’ve had Chinese food, e.g. China. On the other hand, the Bangalorean Thai restaurant, Lan Thai, seems pretty authentic to me, except perhaps the diminished use of fish sauce (which is incredibly popular in Thailand and almost non-existent in India.) I was, therefore, uncertain what to expect from Hae Kum Gang–other than that it had a pretty high rating on Zomato and so it likely had decent food.
I can’t say what Korean food tastes like in Korea, as I’ve not yet gotten outside of Inchon airport, but Atlanta had a pretty huge Koreatown and I ate at a variety of Korean restaurants there. (A Korean man once told me that Korean food in Korea tasted very different because of the taste of the vegetables–given the spice palette of Korean food, I wasn’t sure whether to dismiss this as nostalgia–e.g. tasting the difference between American cabbage and Korean cabbage through the kim chi chili seasoning and fermentation seems a bit of a challenge.)
At any rate, what I found at Hae Kum Gang was on par with what I’ve had in Duluth, Georgia. This was a pleasant surprise because their menu states Korean, Chinese, and Japanese cuisine. While these cuisines have some overlap–particularly with Korea in the middle–they are each distinct. My concern was based on bad experience with “multi-cuisine” restaurants in India that try to do everything and end up doing everything in a mediocre fashion. (Hampi was loaded with such places.) What I ordered was pretty typically Korean, I imagine if you had a Chinese or Japanese dish off the menu you might not find it authentic, but rather like a Korean interpretation of the dish. (Although, Duluth has some fine sushi places with Japanese names and advertising themselves as Japanese food, but clearly owned, run, and staffed by Koreans.)
I ordered the Jeyuk-Chulpan, which was described as: “Stir-fried pork with vegetables, served in spicy chili sauce on a sizzler plate.” The description was spot on. The platter sizzled for about 15 minutes after it got to the table. The dish had a pleasant level of heat (spice) and was tasty. This isn’t a dish for those watching their cholesterol. The pork was quite fatty, which, of course, made it sumptuous and delicious but higher in fat content than many might desire. For lunch it suited me. It’s not something that I would eat for dinner, both because I don’t sleep well if I have red meat immediately before bedtime and because one needs some active time to burn off some of those calories before going to bed.
I was told a bowl of steamed rice came with this dish, but was pleasantly surprised to find seven other sides were brought out as well. Getting a load of side dishes along with your main is not uncommon with Korean food and I’ve had similar experiences elsewhere. The first small plate to arrive was Yukhoe,–a spicy Korean answer to steak tartare. I was a little reluctant about eating a raw beef dish in India, but I forged ahead and found it delectable. It was spicy, and warmed through–though not enough to cook the meat. While it was tasty and I’m none the worse for wear, I don’t know if I’d recommend you partake of this dish unless you know your constitution to be caste-iron and you like to live a little on the wild side. In the US, where there are all sorts of regulations and health inspections in restaurants, there is still invariably a warning to consume at your own risk. The same could be said of Japan, where 4 people died (35 hospitalized) in 2011 from eating a batch of the Japanese version of this dish that was tainted with E. Coli. The standard for raw beef dishes is less than a day between slaughter and freezing and less than a day between thawing and use. I can’t say what this restaurant’s practice is. It tasted clean and fresh, but exercise care.
There was also a soup and a salad. The soup actually tasted more like something I’ve had on occasion in India than anything I’ve had in a Korean restaurant, except the vegetables were typically Korean. I believe the salad was a seaweed. There was also braised tofu, boiled baby potatoes in a teriyaki-esque sauce, and the Korean mainstay kim chi. If you eat the Yukhoe, I’d recommend you eat your kim chi. Kim chi isn’t a personal favorite of mine, but its fermentation may offer you some assistance in digestion.
I’d recommend Hae Kum Gang. My food was 480 Rs. (plus tax, tip, and a mineral water), which is pricey by Indian standards–but, as I always say, sushi and brain surgery are two things you don’t want a great deal on.
No, I don’t know if the name is supposed to register as “Hey, Come Gang!”
Those who’ve read my posts, or who know me, probably know me to be areligious, which–contrary to popular belief–isn’t necessarily the same as being atheist. Personally, and on the whole, I’ve never found enough virtue in religion to outweigh what I believe to be its vices. That being said, I do find behaviors to applaud among the faithful.
First and foremost among these commendable activities is the practice of saying grace before each meal. Of course, what appeals to me isn’t the notion of saying, “Hey, God, you are really groovy for laying this food upon my plate, and it’s my most heartfelt wish that you’ll keep up the good work. Thank you ever-so-much, and YEEAAAH, God!” [Though if a less borderline-sacrilegious version of this kind of grace is your bag, more power to you.]
What I commend is the taking of a moment to be still and introspective before eating, of taking time to recognize the importance of our food. Of course, one can do this same sort of thing without invoking a God or gods–and some people do so.
One can take a moment to remind oneself to be mindful of how one eats, to not eat too quickly, and to recognize when one is full. (Bodily full not mentally satiated, the two are often not the same and the former will usually arrive first.)
One can take a moment to remember a time in one’s life when one was hungry or thirsty and concerned about whether one would have enough calories or safe drinking water to get through. In our modern age, I suspect many have never been in a situation to experience such a thought, and are the poorer for it.
One can recollect the image of some hungry soul, scraping to gather enough food to survive.
One may simply say, hara hachi bu, as Okinawan people do to remind themselves to eat only until they are 80% full.
Whatever you think or say, the goal is to keep eating from being a mindless activity, done on automatic pilot. Failure to be cognizant of what one puts in one’s mouth is the number one killer among human beings–and not just the obese. OK, I admit that I made that statistic up. But of how many statements can it be said that one is better off behaving as if it’s true–regardless of whether it is or not.
On a related note, I also applaud the act of periodic and/or partial fasting as carried out by many religions, as long as the safety of the individual is put before religious dogma, which–to my knowledge–it usually is. One shouldn’t be what my father called a Red Lobster Catholic, the kind who went to Red Lobster on Fridays during Lent and ordered the most sumptuous seafood feast they could afford–missing the point entirely by treating themselves. One also shouldn’t fast to the point that one feels starvation, and then binge and gorge. One should cut one’s intake in a safe and reasonable manner in order to observe what it’s like to feel biological hunger (as opposed to cravings of the mind, or boredom hunger.) Then take advantage of the fact that one’s stomach capacity shrinks surprisingly rapidly, allowing one to control one’s intake much more easily.
One needn’t believe that one has to make oneself suffer as a sacrifice to a higher being to see the value of fasting. Fasting done mindfully, and not dogmatically, increases one’s bodily awareness, one’s thankfulness, and one’s pleasure in eating.
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