The Curry in London
If you ever find yourself in Western Europe studyin abroad, there’s something you should know at dinner time. While there is an abundance of different food floating around, curry seems to remain consistently decent wherever you go. Basically the Chinese food of America, it isn’t even close to tasting like the realistic stuff, and I’m alright with that. The real stuff might burn your mouth clean off so don’t be too quick to demand what’s true to the culture. “What even is curry, I want Chipotle,” you scratch your head thinking. Well, one day when the food gods got together, they decided the world needed a non-deep fried but equally fattening group of meals. Depending on how much naan you decide to eat, I suppose. Their solution? Taking Chicken, pork, or beef and throwing some veggies, sauce, seasoning, and rice on it. Framing it that way I’d imagine you’re taste buds are gushing like a fire hydrant. Just in case they aren’t, I’ll do you the courtesy of breaking down what gets slapped together in your white takeout box for 6.99 below.
- The Meat
- India, it’s got the meats. But yea in a standard Bengali curry, I would recommend getting some of that chicken. It’s pretty darn good with curry. The chicken will either be breast meat or thigh, depending on your preference. This should contribute around a 16-gram helping of protein too, so you’ve got that going for ya.
- The Sauce
- Oh dat curry saws. The hallmark of what you’re eating, the dish will be awash in this delicious Indian nectar. Depending on what restaurant it comes from, the sauce on your curry could be yogurt based or strictly spices/oil/ginger/garlic/cardamom. Carda what? The mother of all cards apparently. I always thought the yogurt based ones were the best to be honest. In fact, it was never brought to my attention that the main ingredient was yogurt in the one I kept buying from The Curry Club in London. If someone had just pointed and said “Yea, that’s the yogurt one,” I might have never bought it thinking that there was a guy in the back dumping Yoplait into a frying pan with my chicken. Believe it’s called Tandoori Chicken on most menus if you’re wondering.
- The Rice
- Typically basmati rice, which is more or less fancy European speak for white rice. Although most of the time the rice I got had some fancy herbs in it and even standalone was very good. Just don’t drop any on the floor, you know that’s how we get ants. Do you really want ants?
- Popadoms
- Take a minute here and say poppadoms out loud. It’s fun, right? Popadoms papadoms papadoms. These are an extra that some places toss in and others charge like a dollar for (or pound/euro/etc.) and are the egg roll to your Chinese food. Could also be the creme cheese wontons, I suppose. But they are a great side item. Generally coming in two’s, they are dinner plate sized chips kind of. I dunno it’s hard to describe here’s a picture:
Besides you thinking I misspelled popadoms, this gives a pretty accurate representation of what to expect when you waltz into one of the thousands of restaurants scattered around that part of the world. Somehow delivery was also cheap when I ordered it from places.
-Cheers!