A heads up for the hungry traveler

I told Micah about the woes of sickness from last week and he asked if there were any ways to discern if a restaurant is safe to eat at. So here are a few tips to avoiding sickness in India.

• Always ask for a bottled mineral water. Drinking water is the easiest way to get sick and unless you’re at home, you can’t be sure the water you’re served was boiled twice before making its way to the table.
• Don’t eat much meat. Power outages are very frequent here, even routine for certain times of day in some municipalities. Not all restaurant managers can be held in good faith to have kept meat cold every time the power went out. The half hour power outage we suffered through in stifling heat last night, could have meant chicken going bad in a fridge out there before some poor guy eats it today.
• Eat at restaurants in hotels. Many nice hotels come with an attached decent restaurant. The quality of a hotel lobby and the building are easy indicators of the eatery so you can easily find a good one. Plus hotels need generators, which improves your chances against the previous point about meat/perishable good issues.
• Just try to find somewhere nice. Unless you’re dining at a Michelin rated establishment, even a city’s nicest restaurants are usually going to cost you a lot less than $10 a head when you order dishes for a group. You’ll get good food, air conditioning and probably avoid an upset stomach.
• Don’t go to Subway. Despite putting up a posh appearance and offering a “Western” dining experience, Subway is what ended up getting me. Guess it serves me right for getting Subway even once in India.
• Ask around, places with good reputations are safer. If that wasn’t obvious.

My many days of catatonic bed-ridden sadness punctuated only by vomiting stints are an indication that this is either crappy advice, or the result of a lot of experience. Not sure but to be safe, just minimize eating out if you can.

As for life updates, yesterday we took a city bus out to Marine Drive near the port. The clustering of shops, large markets, seaside view and bustling port are probably worth many pictures and a good story but I’ve seen it all so many times that I don’t know what to say. We went to Marine Drive every few weekends when we lived here and it’s still cool but quite familiar. The evening did end with some delicious biriyani and parota chicken from Kaye’s. Don’t worry, we’ve eaten there many times before and followed all the aforementioned expert tips :)