Nic’s Search For Beef, Take 2

Quick Note: I’ve decided to postpone (or maybe just not include) my blog posts about having home cooked meals (which are probably much better face to face), and Megan’s departure and how I dealt with it (which could be the subject of a book). There’s just too much stuff going on here and I’m not going to be able to get it all up. If you’re really curious about that stuff, E-mail me or call me when I get back to the states.

Anyway, here goes.

My search for beef didn’t just stop with the lambburger. Since then, I have been asking around, collecting information, and hoping that sooner or later I might find what I’m looking for. For a long time now, I have been hearing whispers about my prize being at a certain ancient restaurant, deep within the heart of Shahjahanabad, which you may have heard of from my adventure about two months ago to the Red Fort and Jama Masjid. And while yells oftentimes are false, whispers tend to be true, so I picked up one day at around lunchtime and made my way back into the ancient city-within-a-city, along with a couple friends.

As mentioned previously, Shahjahanabad is impassable to automobiles, and so we parked a ways outside the city and took the subway, arriving deep within the heart of the city. As we walked back out onto the street, I realized how much I had changed in the past two months.

I have never seen a place more crowded than Old Delhi – people are EVERYWHERE, and the chaos is apparent. Our rickshaw ride to the restaurant was less a ride and more a prolonged stop that somehow seemed to end in a different place than it began. Multiple times we actually hit the rickshaw in front of us and were simultaneously hit by the rickshaw behind us, a double crash that might be cause for concern in the United States but here is just another way of saying “I’m behind you” (along with the horn, flashing your brights, and yelling out the window). Somehow, though, where before I felt guarded and insecure, unwilling to embrace the atmosphere around me because of the crowds and my own unwillingness to be a part of them, that day I felt almost comforted by the massive chaos going on all around me.

The weather was perfection itself – not too hot, not too cold. We passed by literally thousands of shops, selling everything from stolen automobile parts to decorative plates to, yes, even kitchen sinks. And again, instead of being confused by the commotion and the overwhelming amount of people, goods, and animals, I sat there and peacefully took it all in.

Along the way, I heard stories about this fabled restaurant. Begun hundreds of years ago, it had been maintained since by a family of chefs who originally served the Mughal kings. The recipes were all secret, of course, but the food is still authentic Mughal recipes, served in the finest form, worthy of kings and queens.

I should point out here that in India, food is a higher calling. It’s a traditional source of sharing and bonding, and people here take their food VERY seriously. So when I say that the Prime Ministers of Pakistan and India were served from this restaurant to seal an incredibly difficult and incredibly important truce over the state of Kashmir, I want you to understand that this is not something to be taken lightly.

When we stepped out of the rickshaw, I was a bit confused. Where was the restaurant? I could only see a mass of buildings – no fancy doors, no signs to proclaim its existence, nothing. Then my friend Samir grabbed me and we ducked into a small alleyway.

The alleyway, as it turns out, was the entrance to the restaurant. It opened up into a sunlit corridor with small rooms on each side. Waiters in long gowns scurried around between the rooms, taking orders and carrying food. One gestured to us, and we walked over into his room and took a seat.

As we looked over the menu, I and my friends noticed two things. One was almost every dish on the menu had meat, an extremely rare thing in India today and reflective of the Mughal culture fueling this restaurant. The second thing was that there was no beef on the menu.

My disappointment was acute but short lived, for not five minutes later, I began one of the greatest feasts of my life.

We began with some murg sikh kebabs – soft, minced chicken, perfectly prepared and served with a dash of lemon and some green chutney, which is a somewhat spicy, very green sauce. Sikh kebabs are cylindrical and hollow, while their alter ego, kalmi kebabs, are flat and look like sausage patties. These were the best kebabs I have ever had, but weren’t nearly the best part of the meal.

The next course consisted of two chicken dishes and a mutton dish. The chicken tasted as though it had been cooked over woodchips for days, and the mutton melted in your mouth. All three were served in buttery, oily gravies, so heavy you could barely eat them and yet so well flavored that you could barely help coming back for more. One of my friends noted that for breakfast each morning, they serve mutton that has been cooked overnight and literally disintegrates upon contact with the inside of your mouth. I was awed.

These dishes were served with this fluffy, golden roti, like nothing I have ever seen. Most of the roti here (in fact, most of the bread in general) is pretty flat and dry, but these were like a much fluffier, softer, more buttery version of a pizza crust. Just writing about them gives me shivers, and I can see myself at some point later in life becoming obsessed with trying to reproduce them.

We ate until we could eat no more, and then ordered desert. I don’t remember the name of it now, but it was a sort of creamy, rice-based concoction served in a clay bowl. A perfect finish to a perfect meal.

We paid, washed up, and left. The cost of one of the best meals I have had in my life? $5.

I love India.

On the ride back to the office, we all basically passed out. I didn’t fall asleep, but as I relaxed in the back of the car, I felt the same sort of peace and contentment I might find swinging on the swing at the lake watching the sun go down after a full day of wakeboarding. And those of you who know me well enough know what a powerful statement that is.

I think there is a moral to this story – you don’t always have to find what you’re looking for. Sometimes, the fact that you searched is enough.

That doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on beef though – I have two more leads and I’m hoping to try each of them in the next week and a half.

This weekend I am going to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan and one of the most popular tourist attractions in India, and next weekend I will be going to Dharamsala, the exiled Dalai Llama’s encampment deep in the Himalayan Mountains. I may not have a chance to post again until I get back to the States. But I will continue to update from home until my story is finished.