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[illustration: utterly flavorless coconut custard dessert consumed in an Indian restaurant at 6th and 1st. I am still wondering what gave the gelatinous creation its vibrant orange color, and where they put the flavor once they extracted it.]by J J Cohen
Had a great time at NYU and in NYC, and hope to do a blog post about the event soon. At this moment one child is begging me to play Pretty Princess and the other Risk 2210, so I have things to do.
In the meantime, though, enjoy this brief report about David Wallace's recent talk at GW.
10 comments:
oof. I should have warned you away from the deserts. My apologies.
I can't believe you went there and not to Curry Hill. You would have had no problems with desert at any of those exquisite South Indian places.
Irina, my fault, as that's where I told them to go. Nonetheless (and here I go disagreeing again), I love Curry Row over Curry Hill because: a) the food's cheap; b) byob; c) no corking fee; d) neighborhood's more fun; e) I forgot about the bad deserts, since I never eat them.
Karl, I must disagree with you here. Tiffin Wallah is as cheap as they come. (Lunch buffet there is a measly six bucks!) And it's exquisite. An enticing spread of dosas and uttapam, south Indian street snacks, crazy gujarati dishes you have never heard of, the most divine rasmalai and gajar halwa ever. Tiffin Wallah makes me want to weep for every city in the world that does not have a restaurant like Tiffin Wallah.
Lord love a cheap dosa. Okay, I'll try it.
[incidentally, reading Honorius of Auten De esu volatilium, and my god, the Magister's explosive rudeness to the poor Discipulus would astonish me had I not become aware of your work]
I am actually devoted to (knowing that that are all the same or whatever) a particular place called Panna II. Mostly because, of all those I've been to, they have the most aggressive and convincing doorman.
Ok, I'll admit that I actually adore all kinds of Indian restaurants. Cheap, expensive, clean, dirty, fancy, simple, haut cuisine, home cooking, you name it.
That said, omigod Tiffin Wallah. You have to go there at least three times. Once for the weekday lunch buffet. Then for brunch on the weekend, when they have the expanded dosa menu. (Get the one with cheese, tomatoes, and onions. Mmmm.) And of course, for dinner, so you can have the Gujarati curries.
Also, you have to tell me when you're going, so I can have an excuse to go to. Until then, any chance of a reference for the Honorius?
Irina, thanks very much for the tip!
In re: Honorius, ref. is Marie-Odile Garrigues, "Honorius Augustodunensis, De esu volatilium." Studia Monastica 28 (1986):75-130
Lest anyone worry too much about the flavor-free desssert (which I am spelling with an extra "s" because everyone keeps typing'desert' -- but then again the dessert was a kind of desert, that is, a void or wasteland): ANYWAY, the desssert was included in my thali so nothing was lost. Even better: its blandness inspired us to order one of each dessert at the last venue of the evening and to share them as a group. Even better yet: when I declared that the flavorless orange custard tasted like the scholarship of Eileen Joy, she shot back with a joke so obscene it cannot be printed here.
Later that evening she then had the audacity to claim she is a prude. A hypocrite perhaps but a prude, never.
Ok, Jeffrey, thanks for pointing out that I'm illiterate. "Dessert" it is. (My excuse is that, as a medievalist, I don't believe in standardised spelling. As a Canadian living and writing in the US, even less so.)
However, you have now suggested a brilliant new paradigm on late antique ascetic texts: "Hermits in the Dessert." I'm thinking, Anthony hiding in a creme brulee, Paul of Thebes taking refuge behind a cannoli, and Mary of Egypt doing penance between the layers of a Napoleon.
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