The Soup Diva

Here in our Southern city, we do not have a huge variety of ethnic restaurants. We have a good number of Chinese restaurants, a fair number of Japanese, a few Thai and Vietnamese, and enough Latin American spots to cover every corner of town. We also have two Indian restaurants (that I know of). Being a very picky eater as a child and young adult, it took me a long time to try Indian food, since I had heard that it was very spicy and often caused stomach upset.

I finally dived in when a group of coworkers invited me to go with them to Sitar, the Indian restaurant downtown, for their lunch buffet. I had been watching Aarti Sequeira on The Food Network, and she made Indian food look really delicious; so I figured the buffet was a safe way to explore a new cuisine. I’m so glad I did — almost everything I tried that day was delicious (and I discovered a new love affair with naan!) Some new friends invited us to the lunch buffet at India Mahal (in the neighborhood where I grew up) after church recently, and I enjoyed another plate of completely yummy dishes that were even better than Sitar. So I’m hooked! Unfortunately, both times my hubby has eaten Indian food, it has not been kind to his tummy; so I will need to confine my cravings to times when he is not with me (or fix some of my slow-cooker Chicken Tikka Masala!)