Zen Cha, Columbus OHIO

I've been meaning to blog about Zen Cha for some time now. It became a favorite about a year or so ago, but I some how never got around to blogging about it. Now that my time in Columbus is coming to an end, and I probably won't be able to drive to Zen Cha whenever I fancy, I find myself wanting to reflect about it here. For those of you who know me as a caustic and often embittered foodieranter, I think you'll be disappointed here. I'm shamelessly in love with Zen Cha and not being able to go there after I move to Oxford is going to make me feel really sad.



For those of you in Columbus who have not been to Zen Cha, that needs to change! Zen Cha is quite easily one of the best places to get a really good cup of tea, not just in Columbus, or central Ohio, but really anywhere in the US. I've yet to find a place that does tea as effortlessly and with as much integrity as Zen Cha. In the year that I've been going, I've probably sampled every type of tea on their menu, ranging from the coconut chai, hazelnut chai, rose latte, jasmine latte, mango bubble tea, rooibos, almond milk tea, summer fruit tea blend. I've also eaten everything on their menu from the miso ramen, tandoori lettuce wraps, Russian turkey sandwich, spicy tuna rolls, lavender creme brulee, masala chai waffles, Arabian honey waffles with orange, Japanese style savory pancakes. Quite simply, the food is beautifully made and the tea is always brewed to perfection.

But what I especially love about Zen Cha is that it really is a serene space and a place that encourages and supports quiet reflection. When I needed to escape from myself and my impending wedding last summer, I found refuge in Zen Cha. I'm definitely the kind of person who can become incredibly vexed about my writing and thinking space. I can grade almost anywhere but I've rarely wanted, or been able to write in the same spaces where I grade. There is something sacred about writing for me, and at the risk of sounding obnoxious, I am unwilling to combine spaces of writing with places where I might grade. But more often than not, that division of space becomes impossible to sustain because of the practicalities of time etc. But some how Zen Cha seemed to be a space where I could not grade. But, I was able to think and write there. Within the space of the restaurant, I was able to work quietly to put the finishing touches on my manuscript before I sent it off to be reviewed. When I got my copy edits back a few weeks ago, Zen Cha was the only place I wanted to go to complete my review of those edits. And complete them I did--sometimes in 2 hour blocks, but more often, in 4 hour blocks, all the while feeling like I belonged in this space and feeling like the tea was nurturing my mind and soul, allowing me to access the kind of calm and focus I needed to get through that odious process. I'm about to send my copyedits back to the press and I would be lying if I said I did not feel a twinge of sadness that I am leaving Columbus and Zen Cha, and that the book is almost over and I don't have the same excuse to go to Zen Cha. It'll be a while before I am at this stage again of writing a book. And by then, I might have found another place, but it won't be the same, I know...

For this feminist, who loves both Virginia Woolf and Gloria Anzaldua, it has been equally important for me to have a room of my own in which to write AND a room where I can eat and do the things that women of color do. Woolf famously exhorts women to find a room of their own in which to write; Anzaldua suggests instead, "Forget the room of one’s own--write in the kitchen." I like to think that Zen Cha is a space that would have made both Gloria and Virginia happy. Almost everytime I go there, I am in the company of quiet reflection. I see women working, I see women chatting, I see women drinking tea.

I thought about including an acknowledgment in Culinary Fictions to Zen Cha, but I think that's not so necessary. But what I will do, instead, is to offer this humble attempt up for others in the hope that others, like me, might find comfort, quiet and inspiration with a cup of chai in Zen Cha.

Alice's Tea Cup, or Why I'm Glad I Don't Live on the Upper East Side..

Last week M and I were in NYC for a few days and I managed to convince him to come with me to a place called "Alice's Tea Cup." There are three locations in the city but we opted for the Upper East Side, partly because we were already at the MET. and partly because I'm a glutton for punishment and enjoy being around the superciliousness of the Upper East Side.

Alice's Tea Cup did not disappoint in terms of culinary offerings. It had the potential to be a little too cutesy in its paean to Lewis Carroll's tale but it actually pulled off the idea of tea very well. I liked that the china was not matchy-matchy and I loved the feel of the space. The food itself was amazing. M and I opted for something called the "Mad hatter's Tea", a smattering of buttery-warm scones, nicely made sandwiches and petit fours to end. Of course, everything came with a pot of tea. M and I ordered the pumpkin glaze, chocolate chip and buttermilk scones-yummy, buttery, flaky goodness. The sandwiches we got, the chopped tea-egg salad with watercress and herbed mayonnaise on seven grain and the BLT with Stilton on black bread were beautifully done. The tea was perfectly made, even if they did put honey into chai, which as a Desi I find really suspect. So what about all this wonderful food makes me swear never to return? I mean, what could possibly keep me away from amazing scones, great tea and tasty sandwiches? The annoying diners I might possibly encounter if I were to return to Alice's Tea Cup.

So when we arrived at the restaurant, we were given a nice seat in the window area and immediately it was clear we were a little different than most of the clientele, most of whom were young, twenty-something women who either live the life of Gossip Girls Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf, or wish that they did. When we got to the restaurant, M and I spent a good ten minutes trying not to make eye contact because we could not believe the inane nature of the conversation around us. There was a pair of friends, a brunette and a blond--so very Blair and Serena--who spoke (apparently for the benefit of the entire restaurant) about their plans to travel. Brunette (we'll call her Blair) was explaining how her family was building a house in Buenos Aires and was telling blondie (hereafter, Serena) that she had to go there. After all, it was Blair's favorite city in the world. Then it slowly came out that Blair and Serena are not upper Eastsiders but actually go to graduate school in Georgetown. Both were apparently single and kept discussing how they could not tell if so-and-so was gay: "Is he gay? He dresses so well, and I just get along so well with him!" Fortunately, this conversation had to come to a halt as Serena and Blair had to leave.

We were able to order and eat about 2/3rds of our meal in peace, before Serena and Blair, ver 2.0 showed up. This particular installation promised to speak as loudly and obnoxiously about their vacations, boyfriends and importance of detoxifying so as soon as I could, I had to nip it in the bud. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I mentioned insipid white girls audibly and magically, these girls became less chatty after that. But this was not before I was forced to listen to Serena, ver 2.0 tell Blair ver 2.0 that she admired her so much because she was SO independent. Her exact words, which M recalls, "You're just so fiercely independent! When did you first leave home?" Blair then responds, that yes, she was so independent, she had been flying on her own since she was 15. I tuned out for a little (actually, I had to try to not laugh out loud at how stupid these girls sounded) and then had to make my well-timed obnoxious comment to Michael about insipid white girls. Soon thereafter we left, but what was stunningly apparent is how hard these girls were trying to impress each other and to fit into some narrative about what it means to be an Upper Eastsider.

Now I must admit to being a Gossip Girl fan. I will definitely be checking out the Anna Sui line when it hits Target in September:

But, Gossip Girl, in my humble estimation is a little tongue in cheek. It does seem to tap into the excess of a particular zipcode in NYC but it is also show that seems to engage in a kind of wish-fulfillment: teenagers who wish to live such lives, people who are the same age as the actors (not their characters) who have a kind of 'ersatz nostalgia' for the narrative Gossip Girl produces and then then there are people my age who seem to watch the show for reasons I am still trying to figure out. So back to Alice's Tea Cup--I am a little bemused to see what I read as people trying to insert themselves into a narrative and their apparent need for an audience. This ritual of going to tea at Alice's Tea Cup seemed to be a kind of performance for both sets of Serena- Blair knockoffs, evidenced by the fact that they were very much engaged in a kind of performance that was as much for themselves, for each other and for us in a bizarre way.

In an article titled,"Playing Dress-Up: Digital Fashion and Gamic Extensions of Televisual Experience in Gossip Girl’s Second Life," Louisa Stein takes a look into an online game called Second Life in which fans can simulate the life of Gossip Girl. She writes:

[GGSL] invites viewers to enter the Gossip Girl world and take on the mantle of an inhabitant of the Upper East Side, where they dress themselves to fit into the elite word of Manhattan private school–goers. Once virtually dressed for the part, players can attend parties, map out the social and geographic landscape, and explore the minute details of the living spaces of their favorite characters.

Second Life is far from the first videogame that fans have used to insert themselves into (or wrest control of)the spaces and narratives of their favorite storyworlds (119).

Stein's article brings attention to the numerous kinds of fan spaces for viewers of Gossip Girl, and admittedly, I am curious whether we might also consider that kind of role-playing to be plausible in other non-virtual spaces. The easy answer is yes, this happens all the time. Certainly, one could also reasonably consider the new Target line of GG inspired fashion, even the reality-show NYC Prep to be manifestations of GG-mania. But I guess the question which interests me is why. Perhaps it is not fair for me to view these civilian restaurant goers who I did not interact with as emulating a kind of GG ethos, but I think its hard not to see the parallels and not to wonder if spaces like Alice's Tea Cup benefit, or suffer from these new narratives into which people which to insert themselves.

Going to restaurants always has an element of performativity to it--we inhabit different roles, different subject positions. We do step through the proverbial looking glass or travel down the rabbit hole to have alternative experiences, but at least for me, this particular convergence of other people's fantasy and my desire to enjoy tea albeit in the kitsch of Alice's Wonderland, makes me feel a little uncomfortable about being in other people's performative spaces. Certainly, this girl is not interested in being at someone else's tea party, especially when I'm made to be a part of someone else's wish fulfillment fantasy where Alice in Wonderland meets Gossip Girl.

References:

Stein, Louisa Ellen. "Playing Dress-Up: Digital Fashion and Gamic Extensions of Televisual Experience in Gossip Girl’s Second Life" Cinema Journal 48.3 (2009): 116-122.

Masala Kraft, Bombay

In March, M and I took a short trip to India. It was his first time to India. His first time to Asia. It was my first time to be in the role of host in India. It was my first time in Bombay without my parents. As an avid foodie, there was much I wanted to show my husband about the cuisine I love the most. I wanted him to savor the taste of mangoes. I wanted him to see that bananas come in multiple colors, shapes, tastes and do not have to look like the elongated oversized bright yellow, wooody-textured things that are bananas in the US. I wanted him to try piping hot chai. I wanted him to try fresh lime juice and fresh lime soda. Sugar cane juice. Guavas. Indian style Chinese food. Pizza Hut in India. Chaat. Samosas. Mango Ice Cream. Kulfi. Falooda.Tender coconut water. Cool filtered water on a hot day.The list was endless. Wanting him to share that food was wanting him to see a piece of my soul, a piece of who I am, who I have become.

But in a sense, what I wanted the most for him and for me was to taste street food. years of becoming a bonafide 'foreigner' has weakened my gastric capabilities. I cannot eat pani puri like I used to as a child. I cannot eat street food. But what I can do is to show him that food can enliven a place; it can define a city as it can define a state, a country. Even without his cherished beef, I wanted to show him that India could satisfy and nourish his palate and soul.

In recent years, I have become intrigued by the street-scapes of Mumbai. In particular, I like the various everyday things that can exist nowhere but Mumbai. One of those features of Mumbai life I adore and wanted to include in my book was the dabba-wallas, a veritable institution of that city. Much has been written about the dabbawallas, and there is tons of information on the internet that I don't feel I need to revisit the basics of that here. At least not now. The few days in Bombay did not give Michael the opportunity to see any dabba-wallas in action, which disappointed me. I felt this was something he needed to see and I felt so sad that he could not see that. But in truth all these things he "had" to see were more about me than him. I thought I wanted to see India through M's eyes, but I really wanted him to see India through my eyes.

On the last day we were in Bombay, our last day in India, we were both a little melancholic. I am always sad to leave India and M was also a little sad to be leaving. It was our first extended trip away from home together, without anyone else but ourselves for company, and his longest trip away from the United States. I wanted our last meal to be a good one, and having dined at Morimoto in Mumbai the night before, it was hard to imagine a meal topping that one. For one thing, M finally got to eat some beef and the largest shrimp--prawns is perhaps better--that he had ever had.

We opted to eat at one of the restuarants in the Taj which had recently re-opened, Masala Kraft. I knew little about it other than that one of its specialties was innovative Indian cooking. When we arrived at the restaurant, I could immediately tell from the menu that this would not be a meal to forget easily. For one thing, I got to taste sugarcane juice which I had not been able to get anywhere on this trip. Even though it was absurdly priced at over Rs 1000, I had to have some. I suspect the sugarcane juice I had was the sanitized version for gringos who wanted to try streetfood but were too shit-scared to do so--how quickly I had fallen into that category, huh?



But the item on the menu that really got my attention was the 'tiffin', Mumbai-style. When I asked the waiter for a description, he explained that it would be like a thali but that instead of being presented on a large thali, it would be presented in the form of a tiffin box. Needless to say I was intrigued.

When the dish finally arrived, it was perhaps the most beautifully presented meal I had encountered in an Indian meal. Rather than appearing like the standard stainless steel tiffin dabba, this was a deconstructed tiffin box, with each individual dish assymterically arranged on a holder. The waiter then disassembled the dishes laying them out in front of me. The meal itself was exquisite. The flavors were subtle, the meats were perfectly cooked, the rice was seemingly endless and fresh hot roti was prepared to my liking by a cook in the middle of the restaurant.



To me, the dabba-meal at Masala Kraft was a kind of culinary artistry, the likes of which are rarely seen in the US. Translating the complexity of Bombay streetculture is tough and this type of dish would not 'translate' well to American eaters, save for perhaps some of the more erudite foodies. Or maybe I am wrong? But what is more, the dabba meal fits on a broader canvas of contemporary Indian 'art' that uses the iconic image of the dabbawalla to conjure up a nostalgic vision of Bombay. Artist Bose Krishnmachari's art installation, GHOST TRANSMEMOIR uses this icon to make a larger commentary about Mumbai public culture. Swapna Vora's article describes his installation more eloquently than I am able to. There is also another artist, Krsna Mehta (who never responded to my sycophantic message on Facebook. Harrumph) who uses the image on his pillows to evoke a stylized Bombay. The list can probably go on, but these are artists who use the dabba in a way that pos tribute to the power of this icon to conserve, but also re-member the cultural legacy of this amazing city.

So the meal we had was wonderful, but when I returned to the US I was appalled to find (appalled may be too strong a word) to find that the tiffin box had arrived in the US. Not only does Crate and Barrel have its version of the tiffin box:



but mommies around America are also being sold on the advantages of using the "tiffin-box" to send their kids to school with lunch intact. This new kiddie kitsch version of the tiffin box comes in all kinds of colors and deisgns to satisfy the American desire for 'variety' that just make me feel sad.

I was just reading an article by Sandip Roy today and his sentiments capture how I feel about this transformation of the tiffin box. He writes:

When I first came to America, Americans asked me about that “dot on the forehead.” Now Madonna wears a bindi. Bollywood would borrow Hollywood plotlines (well, two or three for one 3 hour film). Now the Kronos Quartet reinterprets Bollywood composer R.D.Burman. Birthday cards are reproducing old kitschy Indian matchbox covers. Tight body hugging t-shirtsworn by gay boys in the Castro say San Francisco in Devnagari script. There are even Bollywood appreciation classes in American universities. My kitsch has become their cool.

Yes, our kitsch has become their cool. I don't know how I feel about this. Well, maybe I do. I don't like to see Crate and Barrel, the whitest of white spaces use this tiffin box as their clever twist on summer dishware for whitey.

Certainly the icon has traveled and mutated but what I like more about what Krishmachari, Masala Kraft and Mehta do is that they layer the history of this institution with their reinvention of this icon.

I guess what I wanted to show M was a context for all I hold dear. I didn't get to show him a real-live dabbawalla, the real behind my fetish, but I hope that his trip to India has allowed him to add and form layers to what he sees about the pieces of India that now travel to the US so easily.

"Going out for an English": A Take on Humor and "Goodness Gracious Me"

Those of you who know me are aware that I am hopelessly addicted to Facebook. As an antidote to that, I've decided to take up blogging again. Yesterday I posted a short commentary about an English pub and I realized I didn't fully develop my thinking about that. I've become more and more uncomfortable with viewing Asian subjects as ones from whom culture and ideas is unilaterally appropriated and have thus, become much more interested in the place humor plays in intervening into these types of discourse.

There is clearly a lot of power in humor and satire and within circuits of South Asian diasporic culture, the sketch comedy "Goodness Gracious Me", based in Britain, is an excellent example of how humor can be mobilized to point out the inconsistencies in cultural appropriation etc.



In the skit titled, "Going out for an English". Its been rated one of the top comedy sketch's of all time and deservedly so. I want to share my ideas about this here, but given that I'm writing a book and am worried about things like, oh copyright, and having my ideas taken, I'm going to quote a lengthy section from a rather brilliant reading of this particular sketch written by English media scholar, Ben Highmore:

"Such a scene of bravado, inebriation, trepidation, ignorance and hunger are given a brilliant reverse-image in the British-Asian television comedy show Goodness Gracious Me. In its pilot episode the comedy team staged a reversal of the white enthusiastic aggression towards South Asian food. With a prelude that mimicked 1970s cinema advertising, the sketch started with an invitation to eat at the Mountbatten restaurant in Bombay for ‘‘the authentic taste of England right here in India’’. Once inside the restaurant a raucous group of Indians are getting ready to order. Asking themselves why the come here every Friday one of them replies, ‘‘You go out, get tanked up on lassis and go out for an English. It wouldn’t be Friday night without going for an English.’’ Clearly drunk and patronising towards the waiter (who is called James, but who the customers call Ja¯hme´s) the two conscious men (one man is slumped face down on the table) ask what the ‘‘blandest thing on the menu is’’, the waiter replies that ‘‘the scampi is particularly bland’’. One of the men goes as far as to order scampi with a prawn cocktail on the side, much to the consternation of some of his friends. The women want to order a ‘chicken curry’ but are cajoled into ordering something English, with the compromise being that they can order something that isn’t ‘completely bland’" (385).

The article has much more to it (obviously!) and is really a very thoughtful reading of the psychic dimensions of going out for Indian food and seeking out the most extreme forms of cuisine.

But if you get a chance to view this skit and are able to comment about it here, I'd love to start a conversation about it.

The full citation for the article quoted above is:
Highmore, Ben(2008)'Alimentary Agents: Food, Cultural Theory and Multiculturalism',Journal of Intercultural Studies,29:4,381 — 398

The Pub, Columbus OH

M recently began to write restaurant and bar reviews for a city-guide website and I've been lucky enough to accompany him on a couple of these visits. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to blog about these places, especially since I seem to have been afflicting by the blah-blogging syndrome. I mean, what else do you call an affliction that prevents you from blogging for over two years?

I was interested in blogging about The Pub, a new English-style pub that has just opened near the Polaris mall in Columbus. The first thing that struck me as I went into the restaurant is how much it plays up the "Cool Britannia" vibe--its certainly trying to show that Englishness is not stodgy and just for old guys looking to eat bland food. Its decidedly working to draw in the hipster crowd and the menu is more "international" than I expected. Two things on the menu (perhaps because I ordered them) stood out--the Jamaican cheesecake and the curry and chips. The food was generally good but isn't it stunning how these food items are now being brought into the fold of Englishness? I know that England has a far more complex of what constitutes English fare than what we think of it in the US. But this is precisely what intrigues me. Does the idea of Indian influence and Jamaican influence make sense to Americans? Do they fully get the idea that "curry" has some complicated connection to India because of colonialism, and do they get that Jamaica was a part of the British empire because of the desire among the English for sugar?

The questions the Pub raised for me are hardly novel--people have been speculating on what it means for curry to be subsumed under British or English for years. Just this weekend, I was reading two very interesting articles about the history of Indian food in Britain and one of the authors, Ben Highmore, also has this wonderful reading of how to think about the fact that a recent British world cup song was called "Vindaloo" or why British pub goers so frequently go out for an Indian.

Part of me is curious about this. Indian food in Britain is seen as post-pub fare, right? It's the kind of food people go to after drinking and there's a lot of masculine bravado about eating in excessive terms--wanting the 'hottest' dish, the most 'spicy' dish. So what does it mean that The Pub in Polaris (and I'm sure countless other places) imagine curry (a British invention anyway) to be part of the culinary offerings in this place that celebrates Englishness in America?

Clearly, multiculturalism is not about whether India and Jamaica can happily coexist with "English" on a menu; it can never be that simple. But at some level it bothers me to see these foods so easily appear on the menu at the Pub like colonialism is the same thing as going on vacation and getting a recipe from some 'ethnic' and then adding it to make one's palate more interesting.

Again, I know I'm not treading new ground here, but I really just want to think through these issues and try to understand why and how an English pub can do well in Columbus given this crappy economy.

An Omnivore's List of Hundred

I read about this post on Kyla Tompkins blog and thought I'd add it to mine. Being allergic to shellfish, I can never make it to 100 but I'll do my best with the others:)
I'd love to know what governs taste, outside of allergies. I don't think there is anything on here I would not try, at least once except for things which will induce anaphylaxis.


The Omnivore's Hundred
Here’s a chance for a little interactivity for all the bloggers out there. Below is a list of 100 things that I think every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognise everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Various cafes, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, Australia

I've been hosting a guest writer, Sugi Ganeshananthan at my college for the past few days and have been inspired to start blogging again. Sugi blogs for Sepiamutiny
(and I won't even go into how jealous that makes me) and that really
pushed me to think about why I haven't blogged in so long. Certainly it
is a commitment and one that I had to consciously step away from while
I was trying to finish my book manuscript. I've now completed it and
its under review, but I'm really not done with food. I guess I don't
know how to be done with food. Its not the same as other types of
intellectual work where one can work on it for a while and then move
into a different direction and the simplistic and reductive side of me
thinks it is because food is more than intellectual--we don't have the
option of opting out without serious consequences, and, its also
visceral and reminds us of the past even when we don't want to.

I was looking through the backlog of things I have to blog about and
decided to start with blogging about eating in Sydney because, frankly,
food in Sydney makes me happy.

The Sydney I visited in '07 is not the Sydney I remember from the 80s. Sydney is a much more Asian city now and I had no problem finding delicious Malaysian food like
beefrendang and Korean bi bim bap. That simply didn't exist back in the
80s in Australia to the same degree. But for some reason during my week
in Sydney, I kept being drawn back to the Queen Victoria Building--I
must have passed through everyday and for no real good reason, shopping
wise. I did buy a fabulous outfit from Witchery, which a year later, I
have still to wear but that's a digression...

I think what I most loved about the QVB was the abundance of cafes that were in the in-between spaces--tables arranged around the edges of the stairwells, tables in the center of the mall: very different than the food court experience in the US where
food is on the basement or in a separate space from shopping. I was
first drawn to the bakeries and cafes inQVB, honestly, to satisfy cravings for food from my childhood. I was in Australia for 10 days and I had to have a meatpie, sausage roll and a lamington dammit--no two ways about it. While that got me to the point of eating food, what kept me coming back to this space was a curious phenomenon I noticed at 5-6 pm. In Australia, shops close at around 5 or 6 in the
evening, and that's it--everyone goes home or whatever. But what I
noticed after 2 days was that professional women did not go straight
home, nor did they automatically head for the bar to drink their stress
and woes away. They would rush to these cafes and meet other women and
eat cake and coffee: an honest to goodness snack. This might emerge out
of the British tradition of tea and finger sandwiches, but also, it
strikes me as so healthy. Its so healthy to not go from work to the
store but to sit, drink a nice cup of coffee and chat with a friend.
Even though I was mostly alone, save for the days whenPasandi and Jody, friends from PNG came to spend time with me, I found myself returning to these cafes at
5pm just to be around another type of socializing. Its so wonderful to
think of people taking time to eat cake and coffee. I am an academic,
so I don't worry about the 9-5 hustle, but if I did, I think it'd be
amazingly therapeutic to know that the stores are all closed and that
people are slowing down for a bit, and that its okay to have that extra
hour before I have to be home or going grocery shopping. I know I'm
romanticizing a wee bit, but there's something very healthy, sane and
just nice about this life: it refreshed me for the few days of my
vacation before heading back to the States and its the one experience
in the US I crave for in some way or form..

Bharat: Canberra, Australia

This post is for my "uncle" Desh, aunty "Anil" and Sandeep--none of them are my blood family, but desis will understand the use of the term uncle and aunty.

When last I was in Canberra--some 22 odd years ago--all I remember about it was how wretchedly cold it was. That, and the fact that there were no real Indian restaurants. Even as an 11 year old, I would pore through pages of restaurant guides trying to find the type of food I wanted to eat. Initially, my attention would go to novel cuisines--things my parents would not want to eat--Polish, German, French etc. Then I'd look for the familiar things. Growing up in Papua New Guinea where there were no Indian restaurants, I also had a strong love for Indian restaurant food. So when my family moved to follow my dad on his sabbatical to Canberra, I fully expected to find all manner of Indian food. This was the "West"--a civilized place where one could find tandoori chicken and the rest. But sadly, I was disappointed for there was not an Indian restaurant in sight in the sub-zero inhospitable climate of Canberra. The closes we got was going to a Sri Lankan restaurant between lunch and dinner. There, we chatted to the owner; as a fellow diasporic, he offered up appam and invited us to pay the next time we came back. That--we never did. And I don't know why.

So imagine my surprise and delight, when 22 years later Anil aunty and Desh uncle suggested we go to Bharat for lunch. Bharat? In Canberra? What was this little piece of India in this parochial capital city down under? As I soon found out, Bharat is a unique treasure, well worth the trip. Bharat is an Indian grocery store, the likes of which dominate ethnic neighborhoods in various nodes of the South Asian diaspora. I might well be revealing my own ignorance here, but I've also never really encountered a grocery store with a semi full-fledged eating area. Granted, we're not talking Tabla style decor here--its basic white nondescript furniture. But we are talking amazing food. Arguably, even the best Indian food I've had anywhere. Now maybe that speaks to the poverty of my culinary experiences, but I tend to doubt that narrative. What I loved about Bharat was that it signalled a radical shift in the way the Indian community imagined itself. Here was a space where immigrants and Indian-Australians came to buy spices, but also stopped to eat.In the 1980s, my mother would have given ANYTHING to have access to a place like that. What my mother wanted, in short, was an Indian community.

In her wonderful ethnography of bay area grocery stores, Purnima Mankekar identifies Indian grocery stores as important cultural sites for the production of Indian culture, and where the commodities the stores sell are “deeply enmeshed in the social lives and identities of Indians in the Bay Area.” (211). For Mankekar, the commodities sold in Indian grocery stores are significant, not because they feed immigrant nostalgia for the fabled homeland, but because they enact a form of “polyvocality”—engendering complex emotions amongst its consumers: pleasure, ambivalence and in some cases hostility." (210.) Central to the drama of the grocery store, if one can call it ‘dramatic’ in an everyday sense, are not the foods per se, but the dynamic forms of exchange and community constructed around the commodities within the space of the store.

Thus, what I appreciated about Bharat was that it lent a particular form of polyvocality to the Indian community in Canberra. Too often Indians are invisible, but here was a way that Indians were not only not invisible, but also making it clear that there was a space for articulating home in this cold and soul-less city. Sorry, I still can't love Canberra. So thank you uncle and aunty for taking me to the little piece of India that is in Canberra, and for what might well have been the nicest impromptu birthday celebration I've had in many a year!

ps. "Bharat" in Hindi, means India.
pps. Duh.