Chronicles of Chennai
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The day we went to a ‘Punjabi dhaba’
Finding an authentic north Indian cuisine in Chennai is not very easy task. You may find many dhabas, which have cropped up in city in last two years due to many north Indians coming here for professional reasons. But the preparation still will have a chettinad flavor. Reason is very simple, just take a peek inside the kitchen, there won’t be a north Indian cook! The remaining story will be clear to the southies who have eaten a dosa/uttapam etc in Punjab or who have had a parantha or butter chicken in south! What you get is a fusion experiment; the dish part is duly gone.
Nevertheless last weekend we decided to try out a dhaba, plan was to goto a famous one – Dhaba Xpress; but then for the autodriver we picked, a dhaba was a dhaba was a ‘dhaba’; so here we land in some exotic and the chronicle saga started!
The owner must have been some marketing maniac; you could see his picture everywhere in all different poses welcoming us to his wonderland! Alice as we were, we fell. When menu came we saw this very similar face by now on the menu too. Er… wasn’t it getting too much?! When the waiter came to wait upon us, the conversation flowed as post viewing menu:
We: We will order a dal fry and…
Waiter: Sir you want it to be fried? In that case you should order Dal Double Fry
We: What is the difference?
Waiter: Sir the dal fry is not fried but the Double Dal Fry is fried
We: (!!) Then why is its name Dal Fry?
Waiter: It’s just the name sir
We: Ok!! Then make one dal fry (now looking more curiously at the menu…) and what is this ‘Punjab di beer’; if it’s the fruit beer (apple juice with soda) we will have it.
Waiter: It’s mathha (buttermilk) sir
We: But there is a Mathha also available in your menu!
Waiter: Yes sir, that is served in glass, in ‘Punjab di beer’ we serve it in bottle. Do you want it sir?
We: (!!) No, no... It’s okay. We will have xyz and Rajmah Punjabi, make sure its properly cooked and is less on masala (we dare not try anything with masala in name itself!)
Waiter: Sir in that case you should order Rajmah Masala
We: But we don’t want any masala in our Rajmah!
Waiter: Sir Rajmah masala is not spicy, but Rajmah Punjabi is
We: (!!) What kind of menu is this? Jo hai who nahi hai, jo nahi hai wo hai? (Reminding us of Govinda’s movie, “Jo chacha hai na shaab, wohi bhateeja hai; jo bhateeja hai wohi chacha hai shaab”)
Anyhow we kept our date with the food there and somehow held the ground; then in the end the waiter comes
Waiter: Sir lassi? Beer Punjab di? Mathha? Kuch lenge (would you order something)?
(we deny with forced smiles)
Waiter: Sir, kuch to Punjabi lijiye! (have something that is Punjabi)
And we couldn’t help laughing that he himself testified by saying this that we haven’t had a Punjabi meal at all!
And thus ended a great lunch of Punjab, should we expect another Manchurian invention*?
* - Manchurian was developed as a fusion of Chinese and Kolkata cuisine, by Chinese who had settled in Kolkata, India.
Labels: Experiences
posted by Jas @ 11:20 PM,
