London, Indian Style

Pappadoms. This will be important in a moment.

Blood sausage, liver and onions, jellied eels. These are just a few of the disgusting foods for which England is traditionally known. In fact, England is essentially the only country I can think of that has an internationally bad reputation for food – and if a major facet of an entire nation’s culture can be unilaterally written off by the international community, you know that shit has to suck.

This was worrisome for me, because while I am a great lover of England, English culture, and girls with English accents, I am also a big food lover. Someone who loves food going to the country known for having the worst food is a lot like someone who loves not getting murdered by drug cartels going to Mexico. It just doesn’t make one helluva lot of sense.

One thing that people did tell me before I came here was that I could expect some of the finest Indian food in the world, thanks to England’s close and sometimes jingoistic relationship with India. This relationship permeates pretty much every level of English society.

In America, for example, should you walk into a fast food restaurant, you’re pretty likely to see a person with brown skin standing behind the counter. The same is the case here, but it’s a different flavor of minority. Indians work many of the service industry jobs in London – they drive the trains, they wait the tables, and they operate literally every single market in the country.* Seriously, fucking come over here and prove me wrong.

*I’ve also seen plenty of Indian people in business suits and ties, because everyone is equal in one big happy rainbow of employment.

This sort of immersion into Indian and Pakistani culture is new for me, since never outside of a speech and debate tournament have I been around this many South Asian people before. The other day, for example, I saw my first ever mosque. It wasn’t anything too special, but having never seen one in Oregon before I took a picture to show all my friends back home and piss off the rednecks.

Everybody walking by was looking at me like I was crazy, this guy standing in awe of a regular building with a spire and concrete half moon on top, because they see mosques everyday. I imagine an English person visiting America would be equally impressed by various mundane aspects of Mexican culture.

“Yes, Mum, it’s really amazing! I just had some traditional Mexican food today at a little place by the Interstate! I think it was called Taco Bell. Have you ever heard of a Crunchwrap Supreme? I think it’s Aztec!”

One of the good things about Indian food in London, I had been told, was that it was often far cheaper than the local western fare. This was what led me to an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane, one of London’s hotspots for authentic Indian food.

I picked a restaurant, got settled at a table, and ordered a lamb curry dish priced at 7.95. And the waiter nodded and said, “You want poppadoms with that?”

And I was all, “Fuck yes I want some pappadoms!”

And the waiter said, “And do you want naan bread with that?”

And I was all, “Fuck yes I want some naan bread! Do I look like the sort of guy who eats Indian food without naan bread?”

And the waiter said, “And do you want rice with that?”

And I was all, “Fuck yes I want some rice! You show me the asshole who tries to eat curry without rice, and I’ll show you a man whose life is hollow and empty!”

And he left, and twenty minutes later my food arrived. Lamb curry, rice, pappadoms, naan bread – a feast fit for a king, or, at the very least, a duke of some sort.

Imagine how great this would look if I'd thought to use my flash!

This good, probably.

And it was great – tender, flavorful lamb, crispy pappadoms, naan bread all fluffy as the dickens. As I ate, I thought, “Man, what a great deal – all this food for 7.95! Long live India! I’m going to give Slumdog Millionaire a critical reappraisal!”

So imagine my surprise when they brought the check and I found that I had paid close to 16 pounds ($24) for what I had thought was a 7.95 meal. Pappadoms? Not cheap. Naan bread? Also not cheap. White rice? 1.95. In America, I can get enough uncooked white rice to smother a baby elephant for that much in dollars, but here they charged me that for a single dish of it.

I learned two things:

1) If you want a good dinner, no matter what culture you’re in, you’ll have to pay big for it.

2) Saying ‘Yes’ to everything the waiters offer you might be a good idea from a multicultural perspective, but it will straight up murder your pocketbook.

Truman Capps can hear the British person visiting America saying, “Would you believe they charged me $2.00 for guacamole? $2.00! Thieves, these Americans!”