Open Writing

From time to time people ask me what I miss most about England. My instant reply tends to be Indian cuisine, particularly the Indian take away.

Until the facility is unavailable it's difficult to appreciate the delights of phoning your favourite meal order through to your local Indian take away, confirming the delivery time, which incidentally is always twenty minutes, then sitting back waiting for the door bell to ring and exchanging a small amount of cash for the most wonderfully flavoured food.

Here in Galicia we are unable to enjoy the delights of a good curry - or so we thought until a few weeks ago. An English friend of ours, David, is teaching English to a girl in the nearby village of Ferreira de Panton. Along with her family, she is here from Vigo, holidaying with her grand father.

Vigo is a large city on the west coast of Galicia and in a chance conversation with his student’s mother, David had mentioned that he missed Indian food, and the fact that it was impossible to get it here in Galicia,

"Not so" he was told. "We have an Indian restaurant in Vigo"

That evening David told us of his exciting discovery and said he would ask for directions the next time they spoke. For me this information couldn't come soon enough.

The very next day I was searching the Spanish online business telephone directory. My first search enquiry was Indian restaurants in Vigo. This drew a complete blank. I decided to widen my enquiry and simply searched for restaurants in Vigo. Some two hundred and fifty six were listed in eight pages.

I decided to start looking through one page at a time, my assumption being that even in Spain I ought to recognise the name of an Indian restaurant. First page, nothing, second, nothing, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth nothing… No! What was this on page eight?

"Taj Mahal"

Handel’s Messiah suddenly started resounding in my head. Hallelujah!

Address, telephone number, even a map showing its exact position in the large and busy city.

Back on the phone to share my news with David and his wife Terri and to arrange our trip to Vigo. The date was set. The following Wednesday. We would phone and book a table for nine o'clock.

The following week seemed to pass quite quickly, but by Tuesday the nerves had started to kick in. What would we have for starters? Chicken pakora, or perhaps onion bajhis?

We would definitely start with papadoms, and David couldn't wait to taste Cobra beer. But doubts also started to set in. What if the food wasn't very nice?

We were all getting so excited the thought of possible disappointment could not be entertained.

Wednesday arrived and off we went on our 300 km round trip for our Indian meal. The map was excellent and we found the place without much difficulty, even managing to park the car really close.

The owner of the restaurant spoke very good English and explained that it was really his second language and Spanish was his third.

The food was very good, particularly the starters. When living in England we were spoilt by some of the best Indian restaurants in the world, so it was always going to be difficult to live up to those standards. But the whole meal was well worth the trip and we will certainly be doing it again.

email address
craigandmel@msn.com