A bottle of Limca
If you had been sitting in the Trichy restaurant where Howard and I were attempting to eat on the evening of Friday the 13th1, you would have heard the following conversation. (It was incidentally a restaurant where you could get that old favourite Mull, Gatwany Soup, the somewhat cannibalistic-sounding Spanish with Lamb salad, the cryptic S/C/Veg Soup, the classic Chicken Maynice, the not very popular Spetish Meat Bolles, the world-famous trio of Chicken 65, Chicken 95 and Chicken 8&8, the amazing Gobi Butt Masala, and to round it off, Venilla or Straw Burry ice cream2.)
'And to drink, sir?'
'I'll have a Limca, please.'
'Sorry sir, no Limca.'
'Do you have any Teem, then?'
'No Teem, sorry sir.'
'Do you have any lemon drinks at all?'
'Just lemon soda, sir.'
'Hmm. What bottled drinks do you have, then?'
'We have Limca, Teem, Coca-Cola...'
'Limca, eh? How about that. Yes, I think I'll have a Limca, please...'
It's all part of the charm of restaurants in India. Will you get what you order? Will they manage to add up the bill correctly? And will you ever find a restaurant where they have more than two menus to share between the whole restaurant? As they say round here, it's possible...
1 You might think that Friday the 13th might explain events in the restaurant that night, but you'd be wrong. Every day is this weird in India...
2 Many thanks to Vijai from Kochi, who emailed me with the translations for some of the above. Mull, Gatwany Soup is obviously Mulligatawny Soup, and Spetish Meat Bolles is evidently something to do with meatballs, but I'd never have worked out that S/C/Veg Soup is Sweetcorn and Vegetable Soup. As for Spanish with Lamb salad, Vijai said, 'It certainly sounds ominous, and I think it's there for the exotic sound of its name; the locals don't care what's Spanish about it, they just like to see the word there.' And finally, Gobi Butt Masala elicited this response: 'Gobi is cauliflower. Butt sounds like someone's idea of a stupid joke, meaning nothing in Tamil.' Thanks for helping out, Vijai; now all I need to do is work out what the numbered chicken means...
