When I travel abroad, feasting on Indian
cuisine is last on my mind. I prefer to try the local cuisine of the place I am
visiting. I love to try new flavors, learn about the culture and tradition of
the places. The favorite food that american enjoy is Pizzas, Fries and Burgers.
Home to immigrants, this is one country, where there is variety of food from
every nation, be it Chinese, Malaysian, Mexican, Italian, etc. But then, if you
are travelling with family and friends then you don’t get much option to
choose, it is mostly the choice of the majority.
During my visit to Chicago at my
sister’s home, I was in the company of my family from Lagos and Spain, who enjoy Indian
food, (I have tried Indian restaurants in Lagos and Spain but have not been too
happy) so naturally they wanted to visit indian restaurants specially for
biryanis and street food of India.
The Indian restaurants in Chicago cannot
meet the standard of the restaurants in India. Devon street in Chicago is micro
India, where you see lots of Indian
shops, Indian grocery stores and restaurants.
We visited Tiffin at Devon street several times.
Although there are many indian
restaurants on this single stretch of street, Tiffin is the most popular restaurant at Devon street and has a great variety of dishes on their menu. Their butter chicken is too sweet but
the kids seemed to enjoy it. Family enjoyed the Malai Chicken and Mutton Rice
too, although I found mutton a bit hard to bite, wish they would cook it to a
bit more tender consisitency. On another day, we went again for indian buffet
at Tiffin, they had quite a good
selection. I didn’t enjoy much, because I tend to compare it with what I get
back home, but my cousins did enjoy it.
Getiing street food like samosas and
bhajiyas is a treat, which is okay but they cannot replicate the taste of
chutneys that go with these snacks.
Another favorite stop was at Mysore Woodland, a south Indian vegetarian
place that also had butter paneer and
chole bature on their menu apart from the regular south Indian cuisine. The
chutney that they serve with dosas is stale and sambar too watery. I , as usual,
ordered my onion uttappam, which is never a disappointment. The kids ordered sada dosa and were quite
amused with cone shaped dosas. The milky sherbet was a welcome change.
On the day, my friend from Indiana
came to meet me at Devon street, we walked into a Pakistani restaurant Ravi Kabab House, once more we had
biryani and kababs. It was disppointing but then…I was beginning to lose faith in finding a good indian restaurant.
During my six weeks stay in Chicago,
I didn’t much enjoy the Indian cuisine there, although trying the
betel-nut paan at the street corner at Devon street was quite a treat.
To be continued
