Street Food in Delhi, India

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JANUARY 19, 2013

Big day.  I get to meet the group that will be traveling to the Maha Kumba Mela. 

I grabbed a quick bit to eat at the same street food stoop I ate dinner at late last night.  Two of the workers recognized me and pointed me to a seat, which was wonderful since I never really understand the proper protocol for ordering food.  My seat was on the corner of a really low bench seat.  Keep in mind I’m on the side of the road.  Underfoot is dirt.  Overhead is a tarp.  Four meters to my right are two guys stirring god-knows-what in several three gallon caldrons.  Beyond them at another station another guy is cooking bread in pans and over an open flame.  Across the table from me are three guys who clearly know each other, along with a fourth sitting next to me. 

My order is taken by the kid who seated me.  I point to bread and a red bean in orange sauce dish the guys near me are eating.  “Dal! Dal!” they shout.  Okay, dal it is.  I thought dal was a title reserved for the yellow lentil in yellow sauce, but I’ll take it whatever it is.  The guys are also feverishly trying to order more rotti (the flat bread that is like naan but without oil). 

The dishes are brought out almost immediately and set in front of me – bowl of dal, bowl of jicama in mint sauce, and a small stack of rotti.  Instantly the guys sitting around me break into a frenzy, alternately pointing to me and my rotti while screaming at the kid.  Great, I’m getting the preferential white guy treatment and the locals want to kill the poor waiter.  I start sweating, not daring to touch the rotti.

After a minute, I start in on the rotti.  Now the locals are yelling at me not to eat the rotti yet.  Great, now the locals want to kill me. 

The poor kid comes back, shammed, with a cube of butter.  The locals switch to English and the situation becomes immediately clear.  They don’t want me to eat the rotti without butter.  I’m a vegan in the U.S. but will consume whatever is in front of me when travelling abroad so as not to offend the locals.  All the same, I really don’t want that crap in my body so I start to go through the motions dabbing half a millimeter of butter on the bread.  The guys start screaming at the kid again.  He reaches over my should, takes the butter out of my hand with his bare hands and smears it on for me like my mother used to do thirty years ago, though my mother likely would have used a knife.  With my bread soaked and shining with butter, he drops the other half of the butter cube in my dal bowl and stirs.  Okay …looks like I’m eating some butter today.

Next they grab my overturned cup and waive it in the air while yelling at the kid again, “Lassi! Lassi!”  I tried to stop them before more dairy found its way to my table.  They wouldn’t have it, pouring me some lassi from their own stash telling me, “Just a little ….you have to try …its like milk’s cousin.” 

With rotti buttered and lassi in my cup, the local guys are beaming from ear to ear and starting to make small talk.  They didn’t want to kill me.  They wanted me to special order the meal exactly the way they do to get the full experience.  I love this country.