Katrin, Daniel

As we found ourselves in Varanasi for a three-days stay, one aspect of the whole experience there kept on haunting me. The food. Or more specifically, the fact it was vegetarian. However, a ‘salvation’ was found in the face of two particular meals that stood out. One of them is known as ‘naan’ – a leavened, oven-baked flatbread that’s normally served with all meals.
Different varieties of naan were available, like garlic naan. However you eat it, naan acts as almost a spoon to soup up sauce or dipped into chutneys. It is strongly believed that an Indian meal isn’t complete without naan at its side. In all honesty, that could not be more true! A great delight can be experienced through eating ‘naan’ even though it is basically bread. However, bread has never been that tasty and able to make you feel full in no time without even noticing how many slices you have consumed so far. This is how delicious a bread can actually be!

Another meal which one cannot forget to mention is the Indian rice with spices. This dish has the immense power to conquer you in the best possible way and leave you craving more despite how full you might feel after the third portion of rice you already had! It is indeed addictive (again, in a good and satisfying way only) especially with the incredible various spices in it. A real joy for all your senses.

Apart from being introduced to those two meals typical for a place such as Varanasi, one can easily notice how the food one consumes affects them on many levels. In particular, when one is vegan and has to always be mindful of what is being consumed and served, or when one enjoys all sorts of meals but does not successed in finding the variety of foods that would satisfy them overall which results,unfortunately, in one having to adjust their tastes and needs to those of the group and let themselves connect to others and be part of a whole in a more different but interesting way-through food.

The final dinner was definitely one of the most memorable meals of the entire trip. The name of the restaurant was what struck me first. Dolphin Restaurant. The fact that the restaurant with the name Dolphin was located next to the Ganges river reminded me of the endangered Ganges pink dolphins. The bombardment of sensory information from the streets seized to stop even as we entered the restaurant. As we entered the green-lit rooftop of the Dolphin Restaurant, the swarm of fruit flies, as well as the loud festivity of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, welcomed us to our dinner table. As if the atmosphere of the restaurant was to foreshadow the diversity of food served in the restaurant, the stimulus on my taste bud resembled a multiplicity of experiences. Take the entree soup for example. Although the restaurant was clearly a touristy, yet authentic Indian restaurant, the entree soup tasted like a Chineses soup served in an American Chinese takeout restaurants. Of course, Indian cuisine that followed the soup tasted quality Indian food, such as daal and naan. However, I could not get over the feeling that some of the subsequent foods, such as the marinated vegetable tempura tasted extremely American, despite its oriental origins. The weirdly comforting mixture of cuisine and culture that existed in the rooftop was what made the restaurant special and excellent.