Dussera Lunch

I had elaborate plans for Dussera yesterday. I wanted to set up my pooja altar (I've been meaning to set it up for the past 8-9 months), wanted to make something nice-n-sweet for breakfast and cook a fabulous traditional lunch (UP-style) of Aloo-Tamatar Sabzi, Pooris, Khatta-Meetha Kaddoo, Mooli Ka Lachcha, Pulav and Lauki Ka Raita. The day began well, with me accomplishing at least two of this list. I made sooji halwa, which turned out to be suprisingly delicious. And we were able to find a beautiful altar too. 

But the elaborate lunch plans slowly got scuttled. It began with my husband vetoing my  plans with 'I want to have some nice sambhar-rice'. Then, it was 'lets go eat at the Durga Puja pandal downstairs'. After that, it was 'lets go have Chinese food'. Well, those two words ,'Chinese food', are like a mantra with me. They have the power to wake me up from any inertia I may be in, they can pull me out of any frustration, depression, or anxiety. So despite all my best-laid plans of cooking a lovely feast for Dussera, we ended up eating out.

This restaurant (I won't name it), serves pan-Asian cuisine, even though its name is Chinese and even its interiors are done in the trademark deep red colour. Majority of the dishes on offer are actually Thai. We've been meaning to try it out for some time now and yesterday was when we were finally able to. 

We ordered a dish of flat noodles stir fried with some vegetables, a dish of mixed vegetables stir fried with plum sauce and a chicken appetizer (I don't remember the name now). Apart from the flat noodles, the other two dishes were less than ordinary. The vegetables stir fried in plum sauce were bleh - they had been over-cooked, had lost almost all their crunchiness and in the gooey, sweet plum sauce, they tasted like nothing. The chicken was deep fried and suspiciously red, sauteed with a ton of spring onions. In fact, I think my neighbourhood, hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint does a better job.

Besides this, the service was painfully slow. My 'dish' of steamed rice, ordered a little later than the main course, arrived when I had almost finished my meal. A pan-Asian restaurant that takes over 25 minutes to produce a dish of steamed rice definitely needs to spruce up its service. All-in-all, it was a lesson well learnt. Never go on the superficial trappings. However fancy a restaurant may appear to be, their quality of food may not necessarily be all that great. And though I do want to warn off others from this restaurant, I will refrain from putting out their name on a public domain.