Basil For The Soul

Travel lets you explore food. But nothing beats exploring new lands through food! Last month, my fellow food adventurer Badhri and I had lunch at Teburu, a Japanese restaurant in Kalyan Nagar, Bangalore. It was my first experience with Japanese cuisine and I was quite excited.  The ambience was welcoming, with artificial cherry blossoms all around the room easing us into the very Japanese menu. (I would lose the 90's pop music, though, in favour of some Japanese instrumentals for the feels.) Miso soup Ever since I played the card game, Sushi Go!, I'd been curious to try Miso soup. So that was our first order. Miso is a paste made from fermented soybeans and it is added to vegetable stock to make the soup. Here, in Teburu, they served it with tofu and seaweed in it. The Miso Soup is unlike anything I've had before. In fact, that can be said for most dishes I tried that day. The flavours and textures are so foreign that I would be careful about whom I recommend it t...

The bus stopped for a tea break just 30 minutes before my destination: Tezpur, Assam. It was only six in the evening but it was already dark. I clambered down with the other passengers, found a corner table to sit at and watched the others order. Tea, a savoury snack and rasgullas! I signalled to the guy bringing a round of tea to give me a glass too. I asked him in Hindi what the people at the other table were getting. “Nimki?” he asked. It sounded like it might be the savoury fried snack I wanted. Nodding my head vigorously to that is how I managed to get my first bite, and learned my first word, of Assamese. It was a short trip in Assam and thanks to my lovely hosts- my friend, Bhanu and his wife, Panchali  (isn't it such a beautiful name?) - I managed to get a good look into life and ways of the Assamese. The Assamese love their fish, so it is hard for them to imagine what I, a vegetarian, could possibly explore in their cuisine. But if you look closely enough, you ca...

"Look at them all you want for free but touch them and you'll have to pay", warned the man at the small apple-stall next to the roadside orchard. The apple trees stood neatly in rows, laden with small green apples in bunches at arm's reach, validating the sellers' concerns. My friends and I took a few selfies with the famed Kashmiri apples before we resumed our journey to Sonmarg. It was July. We had started from Srinagar and were headed to our base camp from where we would begin a 7-day trek in the Himalayas. And it was amazing how much I had learnt about the local produce and exotic foods of Kashmir already.  Kahwa, the Kashmiri elixir: The day we landed in Srinagar, we shopped for papier-mache boxes and kurtis with kashida embroidery. But our most-anticipated buy was a bottle of kahwa mix. Kahwa is a green tea flavoured with spices like cardamom, cinnamon and saffron and topped with crushed pista and almonds. A Kashmiri favourite, and it follow...

                                              I think I know why desserts were invented. I imagine some foodie like you or me drew a long face on finishing a yummy meal ('cz empty plates make us so sad) and someone decided to cheer them up with a sugary treat! And that was exactly what my friend Tanvi did on the last day of my trip to Delhi! But we begin, of course, with breakfast. She checked with me if I ate mushrooms while I played with her little one. And just like she once showed me how restaurant-style pasta can be made at home, she made mushroom-stuffed savoury crepes that begged to be on MasterChef! For the uninitiated, stuffed crepes (rhymes with grapes) are like a French version of the masala dosa. Except you can have sweet versions of crepes too. Bangalore-ians, head to Lot Like Crepes in Koramangala. I had this sweet crepe with strawberry and po...

                                        Bali- a tiny but one of the most popular among the thousand islands that make up Indonesia.  With a rental bike, you can actually travel across the island from end to end in about 4-5 hours. And that will take you from cliffside temples near pristine beaches, through terraced rice fields, all the way to the volcanoes and coffee plantations. Take a ferry to the diving spots and you'll never forget swimming above corals that are tens of thousands of years old. Just like the wide range of landscapes, Bali has a variety of food for every kind of tourist. Forget vegetarian, you get delicious vegan food every two kilometres. On the other hand, one of the most famous Balinese dishes (this may sound a bit horrifying to the vegetarians) is the babi guling/suckling pig. Vegan Cafes in Canggu:           ...

Being vegetarian in South-East Asia can appear daunting. I recall my family trip to Singapore where  bread and fruits kept us going on most days. A few days before my trip to Indonesia, I met this "South East Asian street-food enthusiast" who had traveled widely in the area. So, I asked him, "As a vegetarian, what foods can I look out for in Indonesia?" He apologetically told me that it was all about seafood in SE Asia and he had no recommendations for me.  Now that I've been there, I can tell you that that's not true at all! If you eat egg, that certainly helps you quite a bit, but even if you don't, this food walk is going to be quite the treat. First stop: Jogjakarta aka Jogja Jogja is a city in the island of Java, brimming with cultural heritage. A Muslim-dominated region, the biggest attractions at Jogja are its humungous Buddhist and Hindu temples from as early as 9th century AD! Sunrise at the Borobudur Buddhist temple: ...