The Best Meal I Ever Ate
Last December when we were on a trip to India, my husband and I had the best meal of our lives! One of our primary goals for the trip was to eat as much fantastic food as we could. We stayed in New Delhi for 3 nights, and we had a wide variety of food in terms of flavors and cost. The difference in cost was amazing. We could have a $2 breakfast for two and a $110 lunch for two on the same day. Today I am going to blog about that $110 lunch.
My culinary experience so far has been relatively inexpensive. I don’t think we have ever spent more than $100 for a meal for two before. It all changed with this meal. Based on all the hype, we decided to give Bukhara restaurant in the ITC Maurya hotel a try. I figured we were eating cheaply most of the trip, let’s splurge on this one meal. I have no regrets.
We made a lunch reservation for 1pm. We seemed to have beat the lunch crowd because we were the 2nd party at the restaurant when we arrived. Soon after, it filled up. The tables and seats were beautiful. When we were seated, I felt like I was sitting at some royal dining table. We could see the chefs working in the kitchen through the glass windows. The menu wasn’t that expansive so it was amazing to see so many chefs working on so few dishes!
We couldn’t figure out what to order so we went took the staff’s recommendation and ordered the Presidential Platter. Apparently, this was what Bill Clinton ordered when he visited that restaurant. Before I describe this meal further, let me show it to you…
Are you with me? Good! Basically we were served a platter that could have fed 4 people easily. The servers explained each dish to us and suggested various combinations of meat/sauce/bread that went well together. For the first time in his life, my husband ate really delicious, authentic Tandoori Chicken. It was light years away from the stuff with red food coloring we get in most of the Indian restaurants in the U.S.
Every bite was delicious. Each piece of meat we tried was the best thing we’ve ever tasted, and each was better than the other if that makes any logical sense at all. The Naans and Rotis were delicious and we dipped them in the Daal. Even the yogurt was tasty. My husband never eats yogurt, but gobbled this up. If I had to pick one favorite among the different kababs and meats we were served, it would have to be the Sikandari Raan. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this dish, it is marinated leg of lamb that is cooked until it falls off the bone. Yummy!! Even after all these months, I still remember the taste and texture of this meat. It melted in my mouth!
We were about half way through and we started getting full! What a pity! We still persevered, telling ourselves that we may never eat such an amazing meal ever again, and kept going. We ate an incredible amount of high quality and amazing food! I was in heaven. To finish it off, we were served two desserts. Somehow we managed to eat a bite of each. The perfect end to the meal.
There are still many countries and places I would like to visit in the world. And I keep telling myself that I will not go back to the same places again because there simply isn’t enough time. But something tells me I’ll be back at Bukhara for another Presidential Platter. I’ve heard they now have a Hillary Platter, maybe I’ll have to try that. The whole meal feast costed us about $110 before tip. I would have happily paid twice that if I had to, because this was some seriously awesome food.
