Some like it Hot

US: “Can you recommend a vegetable dish?”

Server: “The vegetable curry is good.”

US: “Okay, we’ll get that… and a chicken tandoori.”

Server: “okay.”

US: “And we’ll try the mutton massalla.”

Server: “Oh, no.”

US: “Sorry?”

Server: “Oh no, it is too hot.”

US: “Ummm… That’s okay, we’ll try it anyway.”

Server: “It is too hot.”

US: “Well… I think we could use something spicy.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind trying something that’s really spicy.”

Server: “No, no.”

US: “I think she’s turning us down from ordering it.”

“She says it’s too spicy”

“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m usually pretty good with spicy food.”

“Yeah, I’m from Singapore, so I love spicy food.”

“Yeah man, I’ll try anything once”

“Should we go for it?”

“Yeah man, I guess so.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, we really want to try the mutton massalla.”

Server: “Okay”

A few of us went for Indian food last night. Us being newbies to Iwaki, it took us a few phone calls and about half an hour, but we eventually found the place. I can’t remember the official name of the restaurant, but everybody in town calls it “Baba G’s” on account of the owner/head chef. The place is actually really close to my apartment.

The place is a cool little place on the second floor of a building surrounded by small shops. Inside, the décor is what one would expect from a traditional Indian restaurant in the middle of a Japanese town – lots of tapestries, spices, fennel seeds, and images of famous Indian people (I’m ashamed to say that the only one that I could recognize was Gandhi). The real flavour of the place really comes from Baba himself. Once everyone had been served, he came out of the kitchen and made his rounds through the dining room where he made sure to say hello to everybody. He is from India, but he speaks both Japanese and English very well. This is probably on account of his love for traveling; he had been to each of our countries and seem to know them pretty well – Singapore, Australia, and Canada (he even lived in Richmond for a while). He’s been in Japan for several years now and all of the ALTs seem to know him.

And of course, his food is amazing. The nan bread that he makes is freshly made and easily takes up a foot and a half of the table. We opted for the onion nan, but there were many different kinds to choose from. The curries themselves were fantastic. We had the vegetable curry and the mutton massalla. They were both of the most flavourful curry that I’ve had.

The mutton massalla was also pretty close to, if not the spiciest food that I’ve ever had (I do remember a night out in the distant past where we asked for the hottest hot wings the kitchen could make – and then to make them hotter, and the chef came out and asked us if it was okay to use this small bottle of ‘atomic bomb nuclear holocaust mushroom cloud free-falling to the earth waving a cowboy hat” hot sauce and us saying absolutely). Maybe we should have listened to our server and maybe we did the right thing – who’s to say really. The massalla was delicious and we managed to finish quite a bit of it, but there is still a sizable amount sitting in my fridge right now, which I may have to think twice about in terms of its fate.

Included above is an image of my iron in my apartment. I knew that I’d get to use this photo at some point.