Gastronomic tours with Swiss Cheese

Today's lunch was at a Thai restaurant in the POSCO building. POSCO is to Asia what TISCO is to India (irrelevant fact). Anyway, if you're Managalorean (and Rohan D'Sa and I have been exchanging several of these Mangi related posts), then you'll be able to identify with thai food. The currys are very similar, and yes, there is meat in them.

As usual, rice was served in a separate bowl to each person. Everything else was placed in the centre of the table. Yellow prawn gravy - and the prawns are quite large (no, not jumbo tiger prawns) - made with a generous dash of coconut milk I'm sure, was placed at the centre, along with some kind of chilly beef (with seriously huge red and green chillys cut into thin slices). There was also prawn fried rice, and some kind of meat fried in batter - I did not ask what it was.

The food was tasty. I managed to eat it all with my chopsticks. The most interesting thing was that even the Thai restaurants in Korea serve Kimchi.

As is true with most restaurants here (and in the US too), coke, fanta, etc., come with unlimited refills.

The restaurant was quite a walk away, and we sort of digested the food on the way back. I practiced reading the names of all the restaurants on the way.

The Korean word for rice is Pap. The Thai word for the same is Pad. Quite different from Chawal, and cooked slightly differently too.

Yesterday we went for dinner to a restaurant in the Hyundai dept store building. It was on the 9th floor. Had the same veg dish that we'd had on Wednesday, but this time with a fried egg on the top. The others had a kind of meat-noodle soup.

They bring this large steel bowl with a plain soup - looks like clear brown water. This is placed on a flame in the centre of the table. They then add vegetables and spices (the standard ginger-garlic paste). Then the meat is added, and finally the noodles. I guess each is added based on how much time it takes to cook. The meat is really thin slices and red when they put it in, but brown when it comes out.

It is then served into bowls.

Once done, they add a bowl of rice into whatever soup remains in the steel bowl. That's mixed around, and then they add what looked like seaweed. Finally, an egg is broken into the mixture and mixed up with it. The egg had an orange shell, and I was told that it was a chicken's egg.

It's all mixed up and served into smaller bowls. The flame is still on throughout. It tastes good, although I think the seaweed has a funny taste - I can only describe the taste as "purple" - go figure (well, if you were to take LSD, then that taste would have caused you to see the colour purple all over (and I'm in no way telling people to go take LSD)).

It was quite an interesting dinner. On the side I've been amusing various koreans with my "hangul reading ability".

Lunch was at TGIF's. The standard TGIF fare.

Is there any place in bangalore where I can get good non-veg food? Kheema Paav and stuf like that.

Went to Pizza Fort the other day, and ordered a fried chicken meal. Tip - don't have the chicken there. If it had any taste it would have been overpriced, but it didn't, so let's not even talk about the price.

Saturday's lunch was at this place at Brigade road called Kohinoor. I had veg kofta and Kerala paratha. Couldn't see the difference between that and other parathas. The Koftas were filling, but that's about it. Price wise, you get what you pay for. Recommendation - unless you're starving, walk on by (and if you're not on foot, well why the heck are you looking that way?)

Sunday dinner was at Hyderabadi Biryani on Richmond Road. Had Egg biryani there. Would have preferred trying Chicken or Mutton, but since I was the only person eating, I thought it would be too much. I think I should go there and try it out again. This place isn't for you if you're vegetarian, or if you're easily turned off by unhygienic looking places. I would also not recommend the water there, but YMMV.

Sometime last week, we visited a place called Santrupti or something like that. It's just off MG Road, take a left from Trinity Circle. Food was pretty good. A couple of the guys had thalis, I had a kind of Pulao, don't remember what I ordered for, but I think I got a Kashmiri pulao. Yathin had a chole batura... and the batura was huuuuge. Food was good IMO. The pulao would have fed two persons, and it was cheap. Recommended.

Swadistha is an Andhra place at Mittal Tower. Relatively cheap Andhra thali, reasonably spicy, so keep the curd rice for the end. Um, eat there, don't eat there. No loss.

Ullas - first floor, utility building, MG Road. Good south indian food, and only good food is south indian. Don't order anything north indian there. Masala dosa was good, but they're inconsistent with where they put the butter. Wada sambar was good too. Worth a try. Go there. Not too expensive. View from the window's not that great though.

The only other time I ate out was Thursday night at the office. We ordered parathas. I had two gobi (since I'd already had methi, and aloo on the two days before, and was going to have daal on the following sunday).

Umm, well, if anyone knows where I can get kheema paav, let me know.