Eating Food for Homework: The Best Assignment I've Ever Recieved Part II

For the second part of my project, I chose Tiffin, an Indian restaurant on Devon. My mom and sister, being vegetarians, were pushing to go to Udupi Palace, which was more Southern Indian, but I decided to come here. The first thing you see when you walk in is this big piece in the middle of the restaurant with two Greek-looking pillars sticking up to the ceiling which has an oval on it with blue sky and clouds. It’s pretty dimly lit which makes the dark orange and yellow walls even more dramatic than they already are. The restaurant is pretty empty at 7 on a Tuesday night so we had a waiter constantly coming over to our table, asking us if we needed anything and filling our water glasses.

We ordered the assorted appetizers which had vegetable samosas, pakoras, kabobs and a spiced chicken of some sort cut into cubes. My father and I were therefore stuck- no complaints- with the kabobs and the chicken because Mary and my mother had to eat the vegetarian things. The kabob was, my dad assumed, lamb sausage which was very rubbery and not my favorite. The chicken looked interesting- it was an uncommon shade of salmon pink- but really was just well-cooked but not super flavorful. Once we were finished with starters, I ordered the chicken makhani. When it came out, I recognized it as a dish I knew better as murgh makhani or butter chicken, something that I had wanted to give up a while ago because I thought it wasn’t very spicy. I had ordered it medium heat but it had only a hint of spice. The buttery taste was still strong in the sauce though which was very good. I mixed in some of my dad’s rogan josh which was much spicier to add heat and that made it better. We also got a garlic naan which is always good to dip in the sauce of your dish, especially because the rice-sauce proportions were way off here and I ate some of my sauce with biryani, which was still very good. When my parents asked the man waiting on us what region of India this food was mainly from, he said it was from Northern India. The cultures are probably different in different parts of India, then, if Northerners are more meat eaters and Southerners are more vegetarian. This could relate to just culture, but it could also be possible resources or location.

In conclusion, Tiffin was good Indian food and while it maybe wasn’t as flavorful as I had hoped it to be, it still tasted good and was a nice weeknight dinner that was worth going a little out of the way of where you live.