who says you can't eat indian in north bay? and tandoori on spadina...
So somehow, it took me, S & E 9 (!) whole hours to get back from a conference in Ottawa a few weeks back. We were on the 417, and thought we were going the right way until we started passing places like Petawawa and Deep River. If it weren't for the kindly man in Ye Old Truck Stop who told us we were "in the middle of nowhere" and gave us directions, who knows where we would have ended up (It was a little surreal, really, walking in there. He was organizing some dusty old cassette tapes in a flimsy cardboard box when me & E stepped into the black-and-white checker-floored restaurant. There was even a hunk of chocolate cake sitting under a glass cover on the counter. And the sign at the window..."FRESH COFFEE AND BURGERS"...I wish I had a camera!). An hour and a half later, we pulled into downtown North Bay and made a dash for the first eatery we could find, incidentally the King Henry VIII Restaurant which served "East Indian, Italian and English" food. Turns out the restaurant was once owned by a brown family, who passed along their recipes and training to the new (white) chef. This was according to our very-chipper waitress anyway. There was some serious desi food on there, everything from biryani to aloo ghobi to qorma. So we treated ourselves to some huge-ass crispy onion-pea-and potato filled, deep fried pakoras with mango chutney. Who woulda thought?
(We also had a pasta dish and fish and chips, and a slice of cheescake. All quite good, and in generous helpings. It helped us survive the trek back anyway...).
also: finally checked out Tandoori Flavour on Spadina just north of College. It's great and I'm going to be a regular (when I don't have my lunch that is. I really should focus on bringing food when I go to class). It's owned by a nice Muslim family and they have student discounts (no tax) and halal meat to boot. I was surprised to see how empty it was though - only one other dude in there. I had a kebab wrap, which is a seekh kebab wrapped in soft, warm naan (yep, meat. sorry to all veg-eaters. they do have veg options though). It was $4.25 and came with a can of pop. On a silver-coloured plate! Funnily enough, the guy asked me if I wanted "medium spicy or hot", i.e. there was no mild to choose from. I don't know if it was cuz I was brown, but the medium ended up being equivalent to what often passes as hot elsewhere.
(NB: whenever I'm in brown-folk-owned establishments, my auntie-and-uncle-anxiety kicks in and I feel awkward and unable to strike up any communal conversation in urdu. not sure if I've explained that quite right, but does anyone else ever get that?)
posted by been @ 12/07/2005 12:08:00 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
i get that. i'm always reluctant/insecure about speaking vietnamese to anyone in stores, etc.. so i usually don't unless i have to cuz they are family friends.
I like Tandoori Flavour. I think they have qood quantity for low price. Although I went there once with my sister-in-law and brother and we agreed the biryani wasn't up to par. But they have good mango lassis and I like the staff.
I hear that linguistic-reluctance. I had a university prof in grad school who insisted in talking to me in Urdu and I would freeze in terror. But for some reason at Tandoori Flavour, as with cab drivers, I kick into Urdu-overdrive. A few weeks ago a cab driver wouldn't let me pay for the ride because I had spoken to him in Urdu (and we'd established that he'd lived just across the canal from our house in Lahore). I wonder if it is a class thing. I think people are so shocked that a girl who they initially read as 'westernized' could/would bother speaking Urdu, that there are no expectations and they are really happy with whatever level of language I have, regardless of grammatical errors.
(my word was 'sptoz'--how appropriate.)
lintil & sharmalade: THIS is what happens when you don't carry a map on a road trip.
hmm, so i guess ppl are in diff spaces in relation to language...could be another thesis topic (actually, i'll bet it's already a thesis topic!). agreed w/rabfish & sharm that there's def. a class dynamic happening.
for me also it's like this sense of shame...getting into that cab, walking into that store, i can't help but think, "this could easily be an auntie/uncle i meet in s.o's living rm while playing role of obedient daughter...or my mom/dad...and now here they are SERVING me" & all of a sudden i'm in this space of privilege/dominance, but it feels like a charade because i'm really just the 'daughter'.
i guess maybe it's a bit of middle class guilt, mixed with something else.
yes, i've been to that restaurant in north bay. it is one of the more decent restaurants in town. there aren't many being north bay. good job on picking one of the good ones right away. you would have been sorely disappointed anywhere else. i guess it helps though that it is right on the road as you drive into town. did you see any pick-up trucks with antlers?
hey folx,
this is really funny. i'm not sure if i told b and s this when we went to hear my cousins play, but they grew up in sudbury, about 2 hours west of north bay. so basically, me and all my other cousins from toronto etc. would traipse up to sudbury a few times a year and meet all the local aunties and uncles.
anyways, my aunt opened an indian restaurant in sudbury out of an old bar and the sign was still up for awhile "james' bar and grill", which then became "passage to india". :D it was great.
funny about finding food of colour in small towns/cities..when i drove to edmonton from ott with my mom, we found chinese restaurants in pretty much every small prairie and northern ontario town, including 3 in north battleford, sask. i asked an activist friend from edm about it..she said that there are connections between the restos and the early shifty forms of labour migration that brought some ppl of colour, esp. chinese migrants into smaller towns.
and as i mentioned on sat. night, i definitely have the auntie-uncle paranoia and language issues with tamil.
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