Vatan

Tonight we took a leaf out of Team BaM’s book and tapped into some vegetarian Indian action at Vatan with Sibylle and Jurgen. Since Karl believes that the only thing worse than Indian food is vegetarian Indian food, he surprisingly decided against joining us.

I was a bit worried when we got there and we were greeted by a bloke in a dress. If he didn’t look like the Indian entry for the sumo wrestling medal then I perhaps would have asked, “hey buddy, what up with the dress?”, but since he must have had an easy 100 pounds over me, I decided to let it slide.

Of course it then turns out that old mate Dressy McDress was our waiter. He was friendly enough, or at least I think he was, because I honestly couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Not only did he speak in a whisper which was ironically quiet for a man of his stature, but he mumbled worse than a horse with a mouth full of peanut butter.

Anyway, the idea behind Vatan is that it’s all-you-can-eat, but instead of being a buffet, the food is actually served to you, and in three distinct courses no less. So out comes the first course, and Dressy mumbles his way through the description of each of our dishes, and of course for each one I just stare at him blankly and wonder how I’d look in a sumo suit, and how long I would last against him in the ring. I decided by the end of his speech that it would probably be about seven seconds.

The only thing that I quite clearly understood was when Dressy pointed at deep fried lump in the shape of a chili. “That’s a chili” he said, “and it can be hot at times”. At times? What the? Turns out that “hot at times” actually means “we’ve plucked that baby straight from the fires of hell. And drink all the mango lassi you want, the chili will just laugh at you, mockingly! Ha ha!”

By the time the main course was served, the fire in my mouth had somewhat subsided, but I was full from drinking all my mango lassi, so I couldn’t really do the meal justice. I sampled each of the mysterious bowls in front of me, but once again had no idea what I was actually eating thanks to another Oscar-winning mumbling from old Dressy. (Why does vegetarian food not actually look like food?) I know that one of the dishes had potato, and another one had spinach, and one had ginger, and that’s about it. The strange puffy things were delicious though!

I am confident that dessert was mango ice-cream. Hard to go wrong with that one, really.

In all seriousness the food was actually pretty good, but if I went back I’d be hopeful that I got a waiter that I could understand, and I’d also make sure I don’t eat for about three days beforehand. Still, at the very least, it was an experience – and the company was good!