Behold my smug, smug face.

My computer is giving me a lot of trouble and making it royally difficult for me to write the post that the subject demands, but here is what I went to Lucknow for. You may try to convince me otherwise but there is no purpose greater than the desire to eat all the food in the world.

So.


Number One: Tandoori chicken at Dastarkhwan. Great hunks of it, please note.

Number Two: Chicken tikka and tandoori roti at Gulfaam, Hotel Clarks Awadh. Not in picture, seekh kebab.

Number three: Chicken dumpukht biryani, Gelawati kebab, Parathas, and Mutton korma at Naushijaan, Tulsi Theatre.

Number four: Shehenshahi kebab, Naan, Kakori kebab at Nawab's, Hazratganj.

The best meal I had is not in the collage. In fact, all of these are the Lucknow Lunches. The Lucknow Dinners have not been photographed but stowed away in the form of fond mothballed memories, because photographs taken with a flash are the ugliest things in the world.

Tunde's Kebabi is a restaurant, no, an establishment, that gave me the finest meal in Lucknow. Everyone seemed to recommend it, Lonely Planet and the local autorickshaw wallahs included, so we went. It is a hot, hectic little shop tucked into hot, hectic Aminabad, the older quarters of Lucknow. You'd miss it if it weren't for the crowd in front of it - the hoarding is entirely invisible till your eyes climb up the building, which is difficult because of the sight in front of you. It is a vision, I tell you, lots of visions. Tandoori chicken being grilled on a large metal frame that looks very much like an abacus, flanked by pans of mutton and beef tikia cooking on slow flames and giving out an aroma that makes you go weak in the knees. No, it is a revelation. The eating space is below floor level, a stuffy, crowded little room that made us get our food packed. We ate in the car. Perhaps it was better that way, because my reaction to the beef kebabs wasn't, as the Mater put it, "exactly...appropriate".

And oh, the chaat. I love chaat. I love all forms of street food but chaat is something that is so quintessentially associated with a road that it can't be made to perfection anywhere else. It needs the dust and the crowds and the flies and the grease; it's the very dubiousness about the water or the tamarind chutney that gives it that extra kick, you don't get it at the fancy places where the vendors use gloves and mineral water. It worked the same way here - I've tried to reconstruct the ingredients in Lakhnawi chaat from memory at home, and failed, and ultimately decided to leave it for a second holiday.


Clockwise from left: a bhelpuri stand, katora chaat at Muman's Royal Cafe, matar chaat at Hazratgunj.

Not pictured are tall glasses of cold mango juice, because it is difficult to remember that you'd wanted to photograph all the food you ate when it's hot and you're thirsty and you're handed, well, a tall glass of cold mango juice. Dussehri mangoes. A little milk on one street to make it a mango shake. A little icecream in another shop to make it a sundae. Everything that delightful shade of golden yellow bordering on saffron. The first taste that is almost like a sunburst. I could write an ode to mangoes, and one to the Dussehri, and another to mango juice, and so on and so forth, but that is not the point. Point is, I could write a post on the things I saw and did, but that isn't half as much fun.

Behold my wide, wide grin.