Where: Delhi, India
When: May 25, 2013 / June 1, 2013
With: Dave
Eating in India was a bit of an adventure on its own. I think the most common advice I received when telling people I was going to India was to be careful about the food. Take Pepto before every meal. Get a prescription for penicilin before you leave. Only eat in the hotels. Avoid drinking from a glass. Don't eat fruit with skin. And my favorite: just accept that you will get sick while you're there.
Curry is amazing in the Western world. And while I had no doubt that it would be equally as good, if not better, in the country from which it hails, all this talk of stomach problems made me a bit leery. Frankly, it makes the food slightly unappetising when you picture it swimming with your future stomach bug. However, once we arrived, we were able to get past this image fairly quickly and appreciate that the food was continually amazing. We were actually so lucky because neither of us got sick the entire time we were there (and no, we were not popping preventitive Peptos along the way, our bodies stayed healthy the old natural way - yay immune system!)
However, the dishes in India can become a bit...repetitive. While there's tons of variety and it was all very good, most dishes are extremely heavy and almost always served piping hot. When the temperature outside is averaging at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it gets a bit tough to eat the thick, gravy based-dishes for lunch and dinner every day (and sometimes breakfast too).
This is where that piece of advice advising us to only eat in hotels came in handy. When researching what the Book considered the "top tables" in Delhi, we realised that almost every single one was oddly enough in a hotel. Aside from having a considerably higher degree of hygenic standard than street food, these hotel restaurants pride themselves on having top notch chefs, high-quality ingredients, and menus that incorporate traditional Indian cuisine with a modern flair. They also proved to be a welcome change to the consecutive curry dishes we would have eaten otherwise.
We began and ended our trip in Delhi, which made it easy to select two of these "top table" hotels in Delhi to both stay and eat.
Our first hotel was The Manor. Originally built as a small country home, the hotel itself was modest compared to your standard luxury hotel, but it was the perfect welcome to India. It combined luxury and local decor to make us feel comfortable in this new and strange land.
Their restaurant was called Indian Accent. Following in the same style as the rest of the hotel, it felt like you were dining in someone's very posh and modern living room. The food was amazing, utilising quintessential Indian ingredients and spices, but prepared in really fresh ways. We chose to try the tasting menu, which allowed for several courses served in small, tapas like sizes. Not a gravy was in sight and the small portions allowed us to eat without feeling overwhelmed. Even the serving platters and cutlery were creative and unique: sorbet served in a mini-cast iron skillet, soup served with a straw, etc.
After that, we started our journey off into the rest of India and after a few days, we were ready for a meal that didn't involved gravy. However, it was not until we returned to Delhi at the end of the trip where we'd be able to try something a bit different.
The second hotel was a completely different experience that the first. The Imperial had all the regal prestige you'd imagine from an early 1900s hotel built for the British rulers of the time. Despite the years of change as Delhi grew into its role as the capital city of India, the Imperial has stayed the same while witnessing all the flux and change around it. Several prominent figures have stayed there (including the King of England at the time) and the hotel itself holds historical significance, playing host to British discussions with Gandhi about India's independence. Original pieces of a private art collection hang all over the stately interior, and the shops, restaurants and amenities are all top-notch. The craziest part is that the rates for rooms were well under $200 a night, so it was a perfect way to treat ourselves on the last night of the trip.
The hotel has several amazing restaurants, as one could imagine. However, it is the Spice Route that claims the title of the hotel's most renowned restaurant. South-East Asian cuisines of all sorts (Thai, Malaysian and Vietnamese) were all blended into a really creative melee of flavours and dishes. Again, we were opted for the tasting menu, but unlike last time, these portions were massive. After several courses of noodles and meats, we nearly needed to be rolled out of the place to our rooms. We could not stop eating, everything was so good and different that we didn't want it to end. On top of incredible cuisine, the restaurant itself is amazing to see. The interior was completely hand-painted using only vegetable and flower dyes and made to look like the inside of an Asian pagoda. The entire experience was fantastic.
If you are planning to go to India, the only piece of advice on the food I'll pass along is to make sure you eat at the hotels, though my motivations for saying so are not to keep you healthy, but to ensure you have an amazing meal.
When: May 25, 2013 / June 1, 2013
With: Dave
Eating in India was a bit of an adventure on its own. I think the most common advice I received when telling people I was going to India was to be careful about the food. Take Pepto before every meal. Get a prescription for penicilin before you leave. Only eat in the hotels. Avoid drinking from a glass. Don't eat fruit with skin. And my favorite: just accept that you will get sick while you're there.
Curry is amazing in the Western world. And while I had no doubt that it would be equally as good, if not better, in the country from which it hails, all this talk of stomach problems made me a bit leery. Frankly, it makes the food slightly unappetising when you picture it swimming with your future stomach bug. However, once we arrived, we were able to get past this image fairly quickly and appreciate that the food was continually amazing. We were actually so lucky because neither of us got sick the entire time we were there (and no, we were not popping preventitive Peptos along the way, our bodies stayed healthy the old natural way - yay immune system!)
However, the dishes in India can become a bit...repetitive. While there's tons of variety and it was all very good, most dishes are extremely heavy and almost always served piping hot. When the temperature outside is averaging at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it gets a bit tough to eat the thick, gravy based-dishes for lunch and dinner every day (and sometimes breakfast too).
This is where that piece of advice advising us to only eat in hotels came in handy. When researching what the Book considered the "top tables" in Delhi, we realised that almost every single one was oddly enough in a hotel. Aside from having a considerably higher degree of hygenic standard than street food, these hotel restaurants pride themselves on having top notch chefs, high-quality ingredients, and menus that incorporate traditional Indian cuisine with a modern flair. They also proved to be a welcome change to the consecutive curry dishes we would have eaten otherwise.
We began and ended our trip in Delhi, which made it easy to select two of these "top table" hotels in Delhi to both stay and eat.
Our first hotel was The Manor. Originally built as a small country home, the hotel itself was modest compared to your standard luxury hotel, but it was the perfect welcome to India. It combined luxury and local decor to make us feel comfortable in this new and strange land.
Their restaurant was called Indian Accent. Following in the same style as the rest of the hotel, it felt like you were dining in someone's very posh and modern living room. The food was amazing, utilising quintessential Indian ingredients and spices, but prepared in really fresh ways. We chose to try the tasting menu, which allowed for several courses served in small, tapas like sizes. Not a gravy was in sight and the small portions allowed us to eat without feeling overwhelmed. Even the serving platters and cutlery were creative and unique: sorbet served in a mini-cast iron skillet, soup served with a straw, etc.
After that, we started our journey off into the rest of India and after a few days, we were ready for a meal that didn't involved gravy. However, it was not until we returned to Delhi at the end of the trip where we'd be able to try something a bit different.
The second hotel was a completely different experience that the first. The Imperial had all the regal prestige you'd imagine from an early 1900s hotel built for the British rulers of the time. Despite the years of change as Delhi grew into its role as the capital city of India, the Imperial has stayed the same while witnessing all the flux and change around it. Several prominent figures have stayed there (including the King of England at the time) and the hotel itself holds historical significance, playing host to British discussions with Gandhi about India's independence. Original pieces of a private art collection hang all over the stately interior, and the shops, restaurants and amenities are all top-notch. The craziest part is that the rates for rooms were well under $200 a night, so it was a perfect way to treat ourselves on the last night of the trip.
The hotel has several amazing restaurants, as one could imagine. However, it is the Spice Route that claims the title of the hotel's most renowned restaurant. South-East Asian cuisines of all sorts (Thai, Malaysian and Vietnamese) were all blended into a really creative melee of flavours and dishes. Again, we were opted for the tasting menu, but unlike last time, these portions were massive. After several courses of noodles and meats, we nearly needed to be rolled out of the place to our rooms. We could not stop eating, everything was so good and different that we didn't want it to end. On top of incredible cuisine, the restaurant itself is amazing to see. The interior was completely hand-painted using only vegetable and flower dyes and made to look like the inside of an Asian pagoda. The entire experience was fantastic.
If you are planning to go to India, the only piece of advice on the food I'll pass along is to make sure you eat at the hotels, though my motivations for saying so are not to keep you healthy, but to ensure you have an amazing meal.
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