Best shoestring meal

maree

Last year I got 3 dozen prawns, chips and salad at the Lakshmi Lodge in Mamallapuram for about US$2 - you can't complain about that. Nice room, too.

Alan D

Does the butter still come with flies stuck to it? Apart from that a pleasant place though, especially the upstairs rooms.

maree

Don't remember any flies in the butter, Alan. I ate lots and lots of prawns though... way cheaper than home. And lots of fish in Kerala. Everywhere else in southern India, though..... yummo thalis, masala dosas (or should the plural be dosai) and idlis.

picklepak

I had a yummy Chanu Batora on the street in Calcutta recently... very enthusiastic guys kept filling my plate up about five times. I could have eaten more, sure, but at only 10 Rs., I was feeling guilty. Got about a dozen handshakes and a high-five when I left... ah, the City of Joy...

But I'd pay $2 for 3 dozen prawns anyday. And this depite the fact that I hate shelling them myself. Perhaps I just need more practice!

maree

Yep, the best thing was they were already shelled!! What's Chanu Batora? I agree that the best value are those cheapy places where they just keep coming with the food... somehow you still lose weight... i guess because it's all veg and it's bloody hot and you sweat it out. Anyway, feel like I need to lose a few pounds so looking forward to getting back to India in December.

Alan D

Hi maree
Glad to hear that the butter was ok at Lakshmi lodge. Perhaps they have improved their health awareness or it wasn't the fly season. My wife, who can be a bit of a mem sahib, kept sending back the fly decorated butter and finally decided to try and educate the waiters, who seemed more interested in combing their hair in front of the mirror, carressing their private parts and chatting up all unattached foreign females. She pointed out to them that the village latrine was less than a stone's throw away from the hotel in the bushes below.

I'm not sure if they understood but anyway her sheer presence meant that they washed the table cloths and cleaned the tables. The flies diminished considerably after that.

To go back on topic, one of the best and cheapest meals we had in India was in a restaurant just opposite the train station in Junagadh, Gujarat. A delicious unlimited thali for about 20r's. Unfortunately we were sitting at the same table as some other travellers who got into an arguement with the waiters because a desert was not included in the price. Sometimes you just want to disown your own kind, ain't it?

abracax

I know this is an Indian forum, but nothing will ever beat the omelette on a baguette I got from a Tunisian place near the Gare du Nord in Paris before taking the train to Amsterdam. Just the right amount of butter and onions, laced with sea salt - pure heaven.

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indiawise

Abracax..So how much did the omelette on a baguettee in Paris.. cost... in indian rupeess?

picklepak

Chanu Batora, well I would estimate that it's chick peas, poofy bread of unknown name, and various sweet and spicy sauces. Simple, sure, but they keep fillin' you up like a thali.

The great Indian food here makes it easy to lose weight. Though when you're trying to GAIN wait, it poses yet another problem. I've been buying shelled peanuts by the kilo and eating them until I'm ready to puke! Does anyone have other suggestions on how to best get my fill of protein? I've started eating meat again, sometimes, but the puny amount of chicken in various non-veg dishes is hardly any way to get my fill. :-/

Incidentally, I've heard this comment about a dozen times this year about the food & travel: "Male travelers always seem to lose weight, and women travelers tend to gain weight." What's with that?? Normally I'd not put much thought into such a statement if I hadn't heard it from soooo many different people...

Alan D

Kelly
I know what you mean about the amounts of chicken in some dishes. Go for tandoori chicken if you can find it. You get what you see and it's usually fairly cheap.

Midnite Toker

Not a meal in the strictest sense, but certainly shoestring. Normally sold from a street cart or stall: Bhel puri.
I discovered the joys of bhel puri in Goa in the 80s. Then, you could get "one plate" (the order is always one plate, if you don't specify what you want the stall owner will ask with a puzzled tone, "One plate?") for a pocket-cheering fifty paise. On my last visit to Goa, the "one plate" price was Rs. 5, but the food was just as scrummy.

For those unfamiliar with it, bhel puri is a number of tiny, crispy puris filled with onion/coriander/potato/lentils... and the list goes on. It's delicious; and I suspected my regular man in Goa last time could tell when I went to him with the munchies, because after I'd scoffed his "one plate," he would ask me - with a twinkle in his eye - "Another selection?" Several variations on the theme of bhel puri exist, like "sev battata puri" (more potato, mashed and stuffed into puris smothered in a chilli sauce and covered with seasoned fried chickpea flour), or "pani puri" (not for those with a weak stomach - you take each puri from the stall holder as he fills it with water from... where? - someplace you don't ask about).

Now, picklepak, I've been a vegetarian over twenty years, and have existed on virtually an Indian diet for one meal each day for the last ten years. Losing weight and getting enough protein are just bogeymen. If you eat rice with a pulse (beans or lentils) or wheat (chappati, naan, paratha) with a pulse your essential amino acids are suppled completely. You will not wither away to nothing! A milk product like curd can substitute for either grain or pulse. The South Indian veg. thali is perhaps the world's healthiest meal.

Eating peanuts is a good source of protein (peanuts are pulses, not nuts), but if you look at your shit after eating a stack you'll see that the body's extraction process isn't very efficient. I think the value's there in peanuts, you just need to chew them for a very long time before swalowing!

Except when trekking, I always put on weight on my Indian trips. But I'm the crazy guy who munches his way through five aloo paratas for breakfast (with curd and coffee) and then picks up a snack from somewhere on the way back to the hotel room afterwards.

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maree

Midnite Toker.... I found a recipe for bhel puri and am wondering about making it. Have you ever tried to make it yourself? Seems a bit fiddly. But, I agree....it's good stuff. Mmm, spicy aloo paratas bought wherever the bus stops. Beats the disgusting toast for breakfast anyday - that horrible sweet bread that goes soggy before it gets to you.

Midnite Toker

You're right, maree, making bhel puris is very fiddly. I've never done it, but I regularly make aloo paratha (usually with a bit more potato).

I wouldn't trash bread in India totally, though. That "sweet" stuff you speak of is quite terrible, but I got some fairly nice bread in Goa - from the market, where you can buy it still warm. A tomato and onion sandwich (I'd soaked the tomatoes in an iodine solution for an hour before using them) is the nearest I got to abracax's baguette in Goa.

And on the recent visit in Goa I bought bread from the bicycle boy at seven each morning - a hoot outside my window and I knew it was time to get out and claim my six-pack of white rolls, all baked together in a slab!

chrissawka

for midnight toker<or all>
u mentioned not to eat ...... puri because itr is made from local water?

also tomatoes in iodine....did tomatoes ever make u sick that u soak them?


i dunno but i believe in fate,and i think for 6 weeks i'm gonna eat anything and everything<from fine restaurants to street vendors> and if i get sick 1 or 18 times in my 6 weeks i'll suck it up!
isn't diahhrea just another part of the experience travelling through india?
i find 1/2 the experience of travelling is tasting the food............all of it!
sounds like it from what i've read then again what warm climated country isn't hard on a spiolt weak western stomach?

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words cannot truely describe the satisfaction it gives u

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come on Chris, you should be back by now, tell us how your theory worked out

Love prawns too, and the beach shack closest to my guesthouse in Arambol has 'prawns in garlic sauce w/ chips and salad' a regular special for 60rp -- the prawns are really what we'd call shrimp, but the 'garlic sauce' is a rather nice curry with onions, peppers and tomato. Also squid (calimari) an alternative in the same sauce. Great views and breeze off the sea, big KF 45.
Not really shoestring price, but not bad. King prawns are more what we would call prawns and they are kind of expensive (90-120/plate) when available, but a nice treat.

The toot of the bicycle peddling breadman around 6:30 is my signal to leap out of bed and head for the path behind the GH -- only the first of the 3 that come has a kind of bagel which I favour -- he calls them 'rings' -- when split and toasted, with a layer of peanut butter (nice to hear its good for me, Toker) and some sickly-sweet jam, washed down with a litre or so of filter coffee made from excellent Peaberry Estate beans gets me going in the morning and sets me up for a morning hike along the beach to watch the fish boats returning and being hauled up, foreigners is various rapturous yoga or meditative poses, village guys trotting from the bushes to the shore with their shorts mostly down to wash their butts in the warm sea and the occasional jogger with a few (mostly) friendly dogs following behind.

Perhaps a better shoestring example might be Sanjay's place where I often go to read the newspaper; my usual snack is an egg cheese & tomato sandwich (on a toasted circular bread roll), a side of bean badje, and a glass of orange juice -- all for 37rp.

Goan tourist enclaves aren't where you find the really inexpensive shoe-string kind of thing, but there is sure some remarkable values available by any normal standard.