An update to eating South Indian food

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Whew! I'm tired. I think I've been fighting some sort of sickness for the last two days or so. Perhaps that sore throat that's been going around has caught up to me. I was doing really well up till recently but I think this lack of sleep these last couple days is what tipped me over the edge from 100% to 90%. I'm still fighting it and hope to get to bed soon so I can sleep and recover, but I had to write blog posts for the last three days since I've been so busy. I was supposed to do work for my advisor today, as well, but it took me this long to get the posts written that now I am just going to go to bed after this. Whoops.

Nothing very exciting today, no adventures, just an evening jaunt to a close restaurant named Al-Bek that I wanted to write about. I went with Tim, Sumedha, Naveet, Jeyandran, Prakash, Ganesh, and Hussain. The place was packed, but we got lucky and a table opened up about 5 minutes after we got there. Tim says it's been packed every time he's been there, and he's been there several times for dinner on varying nights. Like a lot of the fast-food restaurants on our street there are two floors, which is necessitated by the lack of real estate in the city. Things are much more spread-out in the states, there is space and areas and parking lots between buildings. Not here. And since they can't build out, they build up. So the second floor is basically a wide balcony with several tables that overlooks the standing area below.

We ordered several curry dishes and a couple noodle dishes, not to mention some roti (flatbread). I practiced eating like a proper South Indian, with my right hand only and no utinsel. I spooned some chicken fried rice onto the plate, topped it with some masala (sauce) from one of the dishes, mixed the whole thing up with my fingers and went to town. I'm still pretty bad at successfully getting the rice from the plate into my mouth without getting extra rice on my face or dropping it into my lap, but I think I did okay overall. I had a slice to drink, which was a good choice because some of the dishes were a bit spicy and Slice is the best thing to cut spiciness, outside of curds, which I didn't think they offered. After dinner I washed my hands and face in one of the washbasins they offer in South Indian restaurants, copying Sumedha by only rubbing my right hand by itself, not with my left, and copying Naveet by cupping water to wash and rinse out my mouth. I'm torn on how I feel about eating in a South Indian style. On one hand I love the idea of eating my food with my hands. On the other, I'm not sure if I like getting my hands messy. Then again, if you round off the meal with roti and then a napkin your hands come away surprisingly clean. And the washbasins are provided in almost all restaurants, even if a washroom is not.

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