So, walking through Potsdamer Platz, the very extreme corner of my eye caught the familiar signboard. I tried, manfully, to keep going. ‘In two weeks you can go to the one on Janpath,’ I told myself sternly. But by then I was already pulling back a chair under one of those big umbrellas they have on the pavement.
The young woman waiter gave me a desi2desi nod and then disappeared inside. A full five minutes later, another waiter appeared, a young man this time, and presented me with the menus, one for drinks and one which I thought I knew by heart, having ordered from it in branches from South Delhi to East Ham.
The place was far from busy. Three men captured another outside table and began discussing what they would eat. The Spanish guy didn’t want anything too spicy. The German guy was just going to have a soft drink. The know-nothing desi lad from Manchester expounded loudly on various dishes. ‘I don’t mind the rice things,’ he said, ‘but I can’t be dealing with the bloody tubes, you know the whatsitcalled crepes? No, I don’t like those.’
Another couple, probably German, took another table. The woman waiter came out and went straight to them first, even though they were third in the sequence. Then she patiently listened to the three boys bickering about what to get before slowly noting down their desires. Finally, she noticed me and came over. I’d been sitting there for a full 25 minutes without even a glass of water. But then, that is the nature of addiction, you will go through all hell and humiliation to satisfy your base cravings. I rattled out my order: ‘One plate idli, please, and then one plain dosa.’
Another 15 minutes passed. The other tables received their food. The desi idiot kept up a running commentary as he ransacked his tomato uttapam. ‘It’s like an omelette, see? But it doesn’t have any eggs. It’s probably made from rice flour and stuff, like.’ And then, having eaten most of it, ‘I’m not sure I love it, you know?’
By the time the Janpath branch would have rolled over three tables, my idlis came. To call them idlis would be wrong. To call them edible would be generous. With the two blobs of dense, almost set rice-cement came a thimble in which there was something that vaguely tasted like sambhar, plus four small depressions of chutney.
For the 10 minutes it took me to work though the dish, the gods punished me for being unfaithful to all the great South Indian joints in Delhi. The dosa tube was a little better, but cold and undercooked, with only three smears of chutni. I hung on to the idli plate for the remaining teaspoonful of podi. I saw a waiter and asked for my bill.
The German couple paid and left. The Desi Mancunian and his friends followed. I waited. The waiters were clearly being held hostage inside. I noticed that some Spanish people who had sat down 15 minutes earlier were still waiting for their menus. I looked at the tourists taking photos of the remnants of the Berlin Wall. I vividly considered just getting up and leaving. Instead, I went in and paid at the counter.
Putting away my change, I started telling the counter guy how bad the food was. The guy looked at me with extremely parsimonious sympathy. ‘I’m from Delhi,’ he said. ‘I don’t eat all this dosa-shosa, I eat daal, chawal and roti.’