The road to McLeodgunj was lined with endless number of white cars, like a shiny white snake clinging to the mountain slope. When at one steep curve, our car (another white) slipped to a
stop behind an Innova laden with tourists from the plains and when we spotted other tourists leaving
their vehicles to trudge uphill on foot, Other Half and I decided it would be
more prudent to turn back towards home. Of course, I had so wanted to visit that juniper shaded quaint old church called St John in the Wilderness
and to wander around on McLeodgunj's main street, peeking at delicious gemstone jewellery set in sterling silver; but with the line of traffic barely
crawling forward, I decided to postpone the lusting for Kashmiri sapphires and Burmeses
rubies to another day.
Instead, as we turned, I sang a nag-song to Other Half: "I want pizza! I want pizza! Lets
go to that pizza place near the Norbulingka Institute!"
Surprisingly, Other Half agreed at one go, without a single syllable of protest. He is not a fan of pizza, unlike me and one has to really cajole him for this dish. I was therefore quite surprised that he did not demur at all. But then probably because I would be leaving tomorrow, my nagging had worked its emotional ataychar on him......
Whatever the reason, we were now zooming down the hillside to our lunch date, to a place called ‘Joyful Cafe’, rated to be one of the best pizza places in Dharamshala.
The joint is placed quite a distance away from the road and
since finding a place to park in the
hills is like finding the Holy Grail, we parked down below at the road head and
then clambered up the concrete road. The slope was steep, though not too much so and was flanked
by two and three storeyed houses with balconies where Tibetan prayer flags
flutterd in the late morning breeze. The road was also generously marked with
splotches of cow dung, all fresh and steaming and I had to really hopscotch my way around them. In fact I was so engrossed in trying to avert dirtying my new sneakers that had I not looked up at the building in front just at that particular moment, I would have completely missed it.
It was a two or maybe three storied house, built in straight no-nonsense lines, sharply rectangular and very unlike a restaurant front. A small board said 'Joyful Cafe' and had the days specials written in pink and yellow chalk. It announced, ' New arrival : Himalayan Trout'.
'Eeeks, FISH!' I thought. ( If you are my regular reader, you would know of my hate-hate relationship with fish.)
My enthusiasm slightly dampened by the announcement of fish, I climbed the few steps to the porch and then pushed the wooden door to enter.
The inside was dark against my sun-glared eyes but I got a general impression of wood. As my eyes adjusted, I saw wood panelled walls, mahogany colored wooden tables, thick tree trunks cut into planks to make long tables and school-room style benches and most importantly, in one corner, a cute wood-fired oven with brick lined walls....
The ambience looked encouraging, very pizza-ish; and happy, we took our place at a small polished table for four against the wall. The young man who had first greeted us with a nice smile as we entered, now came up with a thin menu card laminated in plastic. I went through it, making a beeline for the pizza section. I caught one option that said Meat Lover's pizza. Looking up, I found Other Half already nodding his acquiescence. So Meat Lover's pizza it was and along with that, while he ordered boring fresh lime soda, I went for the exotic sounding 'Rhododendron Mint and Basil tea'. The drinks arrived in about five minutes. Other Half's order looked ordinary, like any other fresh lime soda but mine was interesting, coming with a white porcelain cup and saucer and served in a cute steel baby teapot. Excited, I poured from the teapot that was really hot to my touch. What came out was a pinkish liquid, the colour of faded rhododendron flowers. Happy, I took my first sip and then was near tears with disappointment!
The brew tasted like plain hot water, totally devoid of flavour. I caught Other Half's eyes. Though he diplomatically kept his silence, his eyes were doing all the slanted commenting. I opened the teapot and found it contained a tiny steel tea infuser with Chinese/ Japanese letters inscribed in longitudinal lines all around it. I prised it open to find it full of uncurled tea leaves, smelling very faintly of some unfamiliar grassy smell. Taking heart that it was not just hot water that I was drinking, I let the tea infuse some more. Sure enough after about ten minutes, when I again poured, the colour had deepened and that grassy smell was stronger.
When one orders something described as 'Rhododendron, Mint and Basil tea', one expects something minty and basil-y, not just pink coloured water...! And then, though I like my teas quite sweet, I was too scared to ask for some sugar.....lest they think I was a behenji......
So if you ask me for my final verdict on Joyful Cafe's Rhododendron, Mint and Basil Tea, know that I'll never order it again.
An employee was now working at the wood-fired oven and I watched with interest. He took a pail like thing with a long wooden handle, placed an iron plate with the pizza on it, shoved it into the tummy of the oven and latched close the door. In a few seconds, a faint smell of oregano and thyme filled the air, making me suddenly very very hungry....
A group of young women were eating lunch on the table behind ours. They looked foreign, with slanting eyes and talked in English with an accent I couldn't identify. It was only much later when they bid goodbye to the owner, I caught the words 'arigato godaimasu' and 'sayonara' and realised that they were Japanese. As was the owner!
She was a little woman, frail looking, short black-as-night hair drawn up in a little pony, small round spectacles, in a chiffon shirt and dark trousers and all this while because she was sitting on the table ahead of us along with an Indian family as they ate, I had thought she was a customer just like us. But apparently she was the owner. Realising this, I couldn't help but wonder about her, about why and how this little Japanese woman had left her beautiful and orderly country to land up in this hot chaotic cauldron called India, to set up, of all things, a restaurant selling pizzas....!!!!!
But I couldn't continue my thoughts further for our pizza had arrived. About a foot and some more in diameter, it had a thin, really thin, biscuity crust with a pretty serrated edge and was loaded with cheese, pieces of ham and sausage slices. Other Half immediately seasoned it with oregano flakes, white pepper and salt that had been placed on our table by the waiter. I took my first bite a little warily, after the fiasco with the rhodo tea; but I needn't have worried. This offering, unlike the tea, was really nice: the crust crisp and a little bit like cream cracker biscuits, the cheese real cheddar and not the over salty cheese spread found in Domino's or Pizza Hut pizzas and the topping of sausage and ham quite generous. Though it was a tad bland for my typical Indian palate, we easily remedied that by some sprinkling of salt and chilly flakes. The interesting thing was that unlike your routine pizza outlets, this place had only a single size, with none of that 'regular', 'medium' and 'large' confusion. And what made it great was that this single size was bigger than the so called 'large' that is offered by fast food pizza conglomerates.
We ate happily, both of us and as we did, I watched the young waiter going about his job. Young, thin and clad in an ink blue T shirt and a faded brownish low slung trousers, he was indistinct from any urban Indian young man. But somehow, to my people-reading blogger brain, he appeared exotic: curled unshorn hair, thin beard, slow, soft voice, large quiet eyes and a long calm face full of something I can only describe as piety or mercy or something like that. He in fact looked to me like Rembrandt's painting of the Christ......or maybe it was just some oregano induced hallucination on my part.
The bill when it came was ridiculously reasonable and a happy Other Half declared to me, ' We must come here again!'
As we walked back to our car, tummies content, slipping down the sloping road, little monks clad in maroon and yellow crossed our path, chattering like sparrows. 'Monklets!' declared Other Half making me giggle.
As we walked on, the benign Dhauladhars smoked vapour in the midday heat, cows snoozed in the middle of the road, Tibetan men sat on open rooftops surfing the world wide web on their laptops, Himachali women picked washing from their porches and bermuda clad tourists from Delhi crowded around the entrance of the Norbulingka Institute to get a glimpse of life in faraway Tibet....
And I thought to myself : how peaceful it all was here, this mingling of cultures and peoples and religions, Buddhists, Indians, Japanese, Italian.......
The rest of the country could do well to take a leaf out of Dharamshala's book, I told myself. For it was truly, a good book!
It was a two or maybe three storied house, built in straight no-nonsense lines, sharply rectangular and very unlike a restaurant front. A small board said 'Joyful Cafe' and had the days specials written in pink and yellow chalk. It announced, ' New arrival : Himalayan Trout'.
'Eeeks, FISH!' I thought. ( If you are my regular reader, you would know of my hate-hate relationship with fish.)
My enthusiasm slightly dampened by the announcement of fish, I climbed the few steps to the porch and then pushed the wooden door to enter.
The inside was dark against my sun-glared eyes but I got a general impression of wood. As my eyes adjusted, I saw wood panelled walls, mahogany colored wooden tables, thick tree trunks cut into planks to make long tables and school-room style benches and most importantly, in one corner, a cute wood-fired oven with brick lined walls....
The ambience looked encouraging, very pizza-ish; and happy, we took our place at a small polished table for four against the wall. The young man who had first greeted us with a nice smile as we entered, now came up with a thin menu card laminated in plastic. I went through it, making a beeline for the pizza section. I caught one option that said Meat Lover's pizza. Looking up, I found Other Half already nodding his acquiescence. So Meat Lover's pizza it was and along with that, while he ordered boring fresh lime soda, I went for the exotic sounding 'Rhododendron Mint and Basil tea'. The drinks arrived in about five minutes. Other Half's order looked ordinary, like any other fresh lime soda but mine was interesting, coming with a white porcelain cup and saucer and served in a cute steel baby teapot. Excited, I poured from the teapot that was really hot to my touch. What came out was a pinkish liquid, the colour of faded rhododendron flowers. Happy, I took my first sip and then was near tears with disappointment!
The brew tasted like plain hot water, totally devoid of flavour. I caught Other Half's eyes. Though he diplomatically kept his silence, his eyes were doing all the slanted commenting. I opened the teapot and found it contained a tiny steel tea infuser with Chinese/ Japanese letters inscribed in longitudinal lines all around it. I prised it open to find it full of uncurled tea leaves, smelling very faintly of some unfamiliar grassy smell. Taking heart that it was not just hot water that I was drinking, I let the tea infuse some more. Sure enough after about ten minutes, when I again poured, the colour had deepened and that grassy smell was stronger.
When one orders something described as 'Rhododendron, Mint and Basil tea', one expects something minty and basil-y, not just pink coloured water...! And then, though I like my teas quite sweet, I was too scared to ask for some sugar.....lest they think I was a behenji......
So if you ask me for my final verdict on Joyful Cafe's Rhododendron, Mint and Basil Tea, know that I'll never order it again.
An employee was now working at the wood-fired oven and I watched with interest. He took a pail like thing with a long wooden handle, placed an iron plate with the pizza on it, shoved it into the tummy of the oven and latched close the door. In a few seconds, a faint smell of oregano and thyme filled the air, making me suddenly very very hungry....
A group of young women were eating lunch on the table behind ours. They looked foreign, with slanting eyes and talked in English with an accent I couldn't identify. It was only much later when they bid goodbye to the owner, I caught the words 'arigato godaimasu' and 'sayonara' and realised that they were Japanese. As was the owner!
She was a little woman, frail looking, short black-as-night hair drawn up in a little pony, small round spectacles, in a chiffon shirt and dark trousers and all this while because she was sitting on the table ahead of us along with an Indian family as they ate, I had thought she was a customer just like us. But apparently she was the owner. Realising this, I couldn't help but wonder about her, about why and how this little Japanese woman had left her beautiful and orderly country to land up in this hot chaotic cauldron called India, to set up, of all things, a restaurant selling pizzas....!!!!!
But I couldn't continue my thoughts further for our pizza had arrived. About a foot and some more in diameter, it had a thin, really thin, biscuity crust with a pretty serrated edge and was loaded with cheese, pieces of ham and sausage slices. Other Half immediately seasoned it with oregano flakes, white pepper and salt that had been placed on our table by the waiter. I took my first bite a little warily, after the fiasco with the rhodo tea; but I needn't have worried. This offering, unlike the tea, was really nice: the crust crisp and a little bit like cream cracker biscuits, the cheese real cheddar and not the over salty cheese spread found in Domino's or Pizza Hut pizzas and the topping of sausage and ham quite generous. Though it was a tad bland for my typical Indian palate, we easily remedied that by some sprinkling of salt and chilly flakes. The interesting thing was that unlike your routine pizza outlets, this place had only a single size, with none of that 'regular', 'medium' and 'large' confusion. And what made it great was that this single size was bigger than the so called 'large' that is offered by fast food pizza conglomerates.
We ate happily, both of us and as we did, I watched the young waiter going about his job. Young, thin and clad in an ink blue T shirt and a faded brownish low slung trousers, he was indistinct from any urban Indian young man. But somehow, to my people-reading blogger brain, he appeared exotic: curled unshorn hair, thin beard, slow, soft voice, large quiet eyes and a long calm face full of something I can only describe as piety or mercy or something like that. He in fact looked to me like Rembrandt's painting of the Christ......or maybe it was just some oregano induced hallucination on my part.
The bill when it came was ridiculously reasonable and a happy Other Half declared to me, ' We must come here again!'
As we walked back to our car, tummies content, slipping down the sloping road, little monks clad in maroon and yellow crossed our path, chattering like sparrows. 'Monklets!' declared Other Half making me giggle.
As we walked on, the benign Dhauladhars smoked vapour in the midday heat, cows snoozed in the middle of the road, Tibetan men sat on open rooftops surfing the world wide web on their laptops, Himachali women picked washing from their porches and bermuda clad tourists from Delhi crowded around the entrance of the Norbulingka Institute to get a glimpse of life in faraway Tibet....
And I thought to myself : how peaceful it all was here, this mingling of cultures and peoples and religions, Buddhists, Indians, Japanese, Italian.......
The rest of the country could do well to take a leaf out of Dharamshala's book, I told myself. For it was truly, a good book!
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