Category: food

Burfi, burpy, gloomy – a train food disaster

If you’ve read this blog from the beginning you might remember me talking about ordering some train food, to be delivered at Mysore station just before we left, in this post.

I spotted the eatery Comesum – hilarious right? – on platform 1, we were departing from platform 2.

The train was there way ahead of time so we got on and waiting for the food to be delivered. Just in case though we’d taken some snacks, plus there’s quite a lot of sweets in a box in a bag nearby.

Comesum knew my train number/date/time, the carriage, my seat, my name, all we had to do was wait. So we waited, and waited, and waited. With 10 minutes before departure I was looking up and down the platform, nothing, 5 minutes, nothing, zero minutes, nothing.

The train departed, we had no (real) food, and whilst it was a bit early for dinner we started to feel hungry.

The train food sellers seemed absent, so at Bangalore station I jumped off the train but failed to get anything more substantial on the platform. From Bangalore the food sellers came on so I ordered this bhaji. It was the size of a small football and had (I guess) a similar texture and flavour, but I was hungry and it didn’t last long.

A few snacks later and I was still hungry, and without any chance of any food stations appearing before bed time.

Hold on…haven’t we got some sweets?

Jane hates sweets, Amy and I on the other hand love them.

Amy drew out a chart so we could score each one. After a while we threw the chart away as everything was met with ‘I suppose it’s alright but I won’t order this again’.

First up was Chocolate Burfi, which was sweet – no kidding – slightly chocolatey and generally something we wouldn’t bother ordering again.

Whilst we were doing this the two chaps who joined us at Bangalore – see next post – refused everything we offered them. I wonder why.

I longed for another bhaji.

Like a kid in a sweetie shop – burfi, barfi, borfi

There I was, like a kid in a sweetie shop…literally. (I still have my schoolboy humour, I’m hanging on to my youth!).

I’d been meaning to try out some proper Indian sweets since our burfi snack (on the train journey on the shatabdi from Amritsar on the Monsoon Meandering trip in 2011) but the right time had never arrived. With a couple of hours to kill until our train departed from Mysore I set off to Adyar Ananda Bhavan Sweets which we passed just before arriving at the station.

This place was huge and the array of sweets mind-boggling, plus being a restaurant it was really busy.

The server asked me what I wanted, I had no clue, what were all these beauties in front of me, what charms awaited – see the next post – and realistically how much should I buy?

I’d only really tried Burfi before, twice in fact, once in Alwar in 2009 on the Big Cats and Holy Ghats trip, and once on that shatabdi train in 2011. It was obvious that I’d have to get a couple of pieces of different burfis, but what else?

What would you order if presented with this?

Video: Homemade Egg Dosa at the Blue Moon Guest House

Breakfast is included in the £20 price of our room at Blue Moon and they’re pretty delicious and very filling, especially today’s where we had Egg Dosa and Idlis, all made by the owner’s sister in the rooftop kitchen.

Here’s a video of her making an Egg Dosa this morning: