M and I set out on our first day of “real” sightseeing today. We aren’t as excited about the long weekend as everyone back in the States because M has to work Monday, but I was very excited about getting to see a bit of India’s history.

Before we saw anything though, we had to eat. Aakanshi, M’s coworker, created a list of “must-do/eat/see” items for us and we’ve been slowly working our way through. One of the restaurants we must try for a weekend brunch is Chutneys. This place was packed and we had to wait about 10 minutes with a ton of other people who were trying to get tables too.I think I mentioned before, chutney basically means “sauce” and we were brought six different types as soon as we ordered.

From the left clockwise: tomato chili, ginger green chili, bengal gram (garbanzo), peanut, coconut (only sweet/non-spicy one), and ginger red chili. 

Ordering was such a fiasco. We only had two pages to order from, perhaps 15 different options total, but since I didn’t know what anything was, I just ordered at random. The server wasn’t too helpful. I’d ask him what one thing was, but couldn’t understand what he said and he also said the same explanation for everything I pointed questioningly at.

I ended up getting the Masala Dosa, Steamed Dosa, one I forgot, and the Upma (I ate this at Google’s cafeteria a few days ago and loved it so wanted to try the restaurant version.)

At this point, I was expecting a small roundish fried dumpling stuffed with masala-spiced vegetables for the Masala Dosa. So wrong. The server brought out this giant, and I really mean GIANT, crepe filled with potatoes, veggies, and other stuff. He cut it in half for M and I and I kept thinking, we ordered two of these?! How are we even going to eat anything else?I think I confused dosa with samosa. The Masala Dosa was by far the most delicious. The Steamed Dosa was kind of gross. It was like a pancake made out of the same crepe batter, but steamed and spongy. And it tasted almost like injera, the Ethiopian sponge sour flat bread. Not good. The upma wasn’t as good as Google’s version and the one where I forgot the name was just a very thin crackly crepe with nothing inside but herbs and seasonings mixed into the batter. We used that to eat more chutney.

Definitely fun. Aakanshi, you never lead us astray!

Up next: Qutb Shahi Tombs

xoxo,

Jenn