Forking Tasty

Riskiest Meal in India

Munnar is a town that sits high in the mountains surrounded by tea plantations. It had taken me 6 hours to reach it by car. In those 6 hours I had been to an elephant bath, waterfalls and a spice farm. Now I was about to roll the dice…

Milestone Meal in India

You only turn 35 once, so I decided to do it in a palace. I woke up on my 35th birthday on a rice boat in Kerela. By dinner time I had finished a 1 hour boat ride, 2 hour car ride, 1 hour flight and another 4 hour drive to get myself to Mysore. Mysore is in Karnataka and just happens to be Preethi’s Dad’s home town. I came to Mysore mostly because of the market but this added bit of legacy made it even more special…

Best Meal In India

Choosing one “best” meal is very tough, as you could imagine. As we always say on this blog, meals are just as much about where you are and who you’re with than what you are eating. For this post I am going to suppress that thinking just a touch and focus heavily on the food.

Needless to say I ate a lot in India. But, as I recounted the many meals I consumed, one stood out among the rest. Well, three stood out actually. Did you really think I was going to be able to choose just one? My saving grace is…

Round & Round, Round you go

Rotating Restaurant in the Pearl Building, Shanghai from Anthony Anello on Vimeo.

The Pearl Building in Shanghai is a really cool site. It is manly used as a TV/Radio station and tower. That occupies the 1st main pearl. They have a see through floor, a post office and a revolving restaurant in the second pearl. Where the tourists go. The see through floor was really cool. It was like you were walking on air. We were very hungry and decided to stay high up in the sky and eat at the revolving Chinese buffet. It was fun and the view was nice even with the smog/pollution. The food was better. Lots of things to choose from (a.k.a. buffet). At one point I missed an entire section of the buffet. However, you know me, when I found it I tasted each and every plate. It was a fun experience.

P.I.E. WITH Mike and Mark

It had been a long two months leading up to this meal. Mike and Mark were instrumental in helping me pull off the yodel studio project. They were even more valuable on the ground with me in Mumbai. We had finally just finished the whole project and caught our breath and it was time to celebrate. For our celebratory meal we headed down to Leopold’s in Colaba for a good ex-Pat Indian meal.

Mike is a SO CAL guy, bringing that calm and chill behavior to the crazy world of Mumbai. Mark is a NO CAL guy, also a calm person, but in a different way than SO CAL. If you have ever lived in California you know the difference. My relationship with these guys has only been a short 2 months but in that time we talked a lot about the project details. Mark and Mike thanks for all the help with the studio. Ohh, and Mark, I will be out to take you up on that kayak offer one day.

What we ate:

Chicken Tikka Masala
Tandoori chicken
Lamb Rogan Josh
Garlic naan
Plain Naan

Market Madness

This video captures the extensive stands and stalls that make up the ubber colorful Mysore Market. I spent 2 days in Mysore sucking up the history, landmarks, architecture and food. The market was the best I found in all of India. By day two I had my chai guy, chalk guy and kitchen utensil vendors calling me by name. A good food market is always at the heart of any great town and this definitely exceeded my expectations.

It Was Great…Until The Cops Came

Shanghai is a really REALLY big city. Over 20 million people live here. Some how we managed to find this really small area that has lots of restaurants and cafes. The area is really tight, like ally ways making up a maze. We went to a little sushi restaurant up stairs called Akurah and sat out on a balcony. It was about 10pm and there was hardly anyone around. We ordered a lot of sushi, sashimi and chicken curry. We were having a good time laughing and trying to communicate with the staff until the cops came…

P.I.E. WITH Shaa’ir

When I first met Shaa’ir I was stuffed in the back of a van in India, cars were wizzing by on my right and a gaggle of kids were grouping up on the right. She poked her head in the passenger door to say a quick hello before we headed out to our next video shoot location. Shaa’ir(Monica) is one half of the Mumbai based electro, funk duo Shaa’ir + Func.

A few days later the shoot was completed and Shaa’ir, my video director/producers and I headed out for some Diwali partying.(Func had to run off to a gig in Australia) But, before that we hit some grub. A chinese restaurant in Bandrha would do the trick. Shaa’ir ordered up a bunch of dishes and we all dug in.

Shaa’ir has a beautiful voice and a welcoming energy about her. She has an interesting story in that she grew up in the United States (did her time in NYC) but then moved to Mumbai because she felt the creative energy there was what she needed. Over the few days I hung out with her I could sense these two sides to her. On October 25th I realized why I had such a strong feeling of her character so quickly. We both celebrate that day as our day of birth. Although almost a decade apart scorpios know scorpios. Rather than me try and explain all this more, here is the final documentary we were filming of both Shaa’ir + Func. It will fill in their story much better than I could.

What we ate:

Spicy prawns
Chili chicken
Vegetable fried rice
Chicken kebabs
Fried Cabbage

The Filthy Cook Shack

On the tails of my post from yesterday comes this meal I ate my second day in Cochin. I can safely say this is where I strayed from the path. This was the biggest food risk I had taken up to this point on the trip BUT it had to be done. Because Cochin is a big fishing and trading port, they have a lot of fresh fish on hand. Being the industrious and persistent Indians that they are, the locals set up a series of make shift kitchens along the side of one of the roads near the fish market. The deal is this…

Kerela Kitchen

After Goa I headed down to Kerela. Cochin to be exact.Yes, yes, where I made the chai. But before I made that Chai I got into some real cooking with those two chefs. The night I arrived in Cochin I was picked up by Babu, a driver sent for me, and brought to the homestay I was sleeping at for the next 2 days. By the time I arrived it was late but I was hungry. Leslie, the homestay owner, told me the guys were in the kitchen and I should head down once settled into my room.

A few minutes later I headed down the steps and out through the front sitting area to the kitchen/restaurant. I sat at one of the tables and waited for one of the chef’s. I was the only person around and so I asked if I could come into the kitchen and watch them cook. They saw no problem with this and so the two of us headed back into the kitchen so I could see what was going on. The video above shows, in detail, my appetizer and kingfish appetizer being created. What I stripped out of this video was the original audio. The jumpcuts required this but during almost the entire entree preparation I was engaged in a conversation about marriage. I was being questioned about why I got divorced, how i got divorced and why I was not married again. In India, getting married is a big deal that ALWAYS happens. Being 35 and NOT married is a mystery and intrigue to most. Perhaps one day I will post the audio because it contains some interesting nuggets of perspective from the two young chefs questioning me. For now we can just leave it alone by saying, if they had it their way I would be getting married again very soon.