My First Visit To an Indian Restaurant
And The “hottest” dish in the world
When I was in third grade, my parents took me to an Indian restaurant for the first time along with a few of our neighbors. To this day I’m not positive which restaurant it was, but I suspect that it was one of the first Indian restaurants in the Boston area named simply India Restaurant. While I remember this restaurant when it was located in Davis Square, it appears that at the time of my first visit, they might have been situated on Massachusetts Ave in Porter Square (about a mile away).
Today, I have no idea what I ate on that first visit. But I certainly remember one of my neighbors’ order. “What’s vindaloo?” I must have asked him. “It’s the hottest dish in the world” was the answer I got back. Whoa.... That caught my interest. “But, what exactly is this red looking dish you call vindaloo? What makes it hot?” I began to wonder. However it would be several years before I was able to begin to get some answers. I am pretty sure that this dinner occurred before our family received The Good Food of Szechwan which became the enabler to my chili pepper and spicy food “problem.”
Back in the third grade, however, the “hot” region of my taste buds had not yet been activated. My curiosity had certainly been piqued and I think this dinner planted a seed deep in my consciousness: vindaloo = hot! Maybe it became a bit of a challenge: “Now I want to experience the hottest dish in the world.”
Many years later, after the Tablespoon Chili Incident, the Matouk’s Easter Biryani event, sampling Dave’s Insanity Sauce and so many fiery restaurant vindaloos, I heard about a dish named phall, which is a British Indian Restaurant concoction that is supposedly “hotter” than vindaloo. I was not able to try phall until very recently and I found it to be toned down compared to what I had ben expecting.
I kept looking for the heat though, and I finally found it in the early 2000s. After three battles (on different nights) with Pasta from Hell during East Coast Grill’s Hell Night, I was finally cured. After that, I took a step back from the heat for the most part. Interestingly I found it curious that the Hell Night version of vindaloo was pretty tame, though tasty.
But those were all in the future. My third grade dinner set the quest for heat in motion. It also set the path squarely in the direction of India. By the time I reached college, the curiosity was beginning to build from mild interest to inquisitive exploration. I began to sample the plentiful restaurants around Boston and Cambridge. The more I discovered, the more questions I had and the greater the fascination. And I forever wanted it hotter!
Years later I returned to India Restaurant, which had remained in business well into the nineties and had become a favorite of mine. Their food was good and a dinner would automatically include a side dish of dal and a kachori. Unique to their condiment tray was a very pungent chili pickle which, oddly enough, I didn’t particularly care for at the time.
This was when I finally got to try India Restaurant’s vindaloo for myself; several times in fact. Each time I would ask the waiter to make it very hot. Usually it would be “hot” — hotter than if I didn’t say anything — but nothing mind bending. However once the chef must have been piqued by my request and just added a lot of chili which indeed made it very hot. But the dish was missing the tang of the vinegar which gives vindaloo its signature flavor. Alas I would have to wait another day for my extreme vindaloo. But that day was coming.