The Great Kebab Factory

I'm going to dedicate this post to my dad, who introduced us to this restaurant and is a huge foodie.

We visited the Great Kebab Factory on our last night in Bhubaneswar. My father was quite excited about going to this restaurant for dinner, so we ended up eating a light lunch, in order to prepare ourselves for the dinner. At 7:30, we reached the restaurant. Most people in India don't eat dinner until 9:30-10 ish, so the restaurant was empty. We ordered the non-vegetarian kebab platter, which came with five different types of kebabs. First was a delicious mutton (which is basically lamb) kebab served with roti. Side note: I normally hate eating anything related to lamb, but this was delicious. It was extremely rich and a bit spicy. The roti was used to wrap up the lamb and eat it like a burrito. Next came a chicken kebab, called the malai kebab. The malai kabob looked something like this, and was pretty mild, a nice change from the mutton. Next came what I like to call, the fish-and-chips fish kebabs. The fish-and-chips fish is succulent on the inside and is crispy on the outside (as the fish is dipped in beer batter and then fried). This was exactly what the kebab tasted like. Next came a kebab that tasted like baby back ribs (which I don't like at all), so a few nibbles and I was done. And lastly came another chicken kebab, but I do not remember what that tasted like, other than the fact that it was a bit spicy. Then came time for seconds. Obviously I ate seconds, but only the stuff that I liked-namely the mutton (which was getting difficult to eat on account of the fact that it was really, really rich), the malai kebab, and the fish and chips fish kebab.

One would think that dinner would be over. Nope. In fact, the kebabs were only the appetizers. Afterwards, as part of the non-vegetarian platter, there was rice, daal (lentils), roti, and vegetables. My already full stomach couldn't turn down food (after all, kids in Africa were dying from starvation), so I had a helping of rice, daal, and roti.

Cue next course: the unlimited dessert course! Yes, I used unlimited and dessert in the same sentence. My now bursting stomach decided that it still had room for some dessert. I had gulab jamun. It was scrumptious, delicious, and a piece of heaven (or as my dad would say, "heaven on earth") My only regret was that I only had one dessert, and that too, only one serving of that dessert. The other desserts included kulfi (which is Indian ice cream) and gadjar ka halwa (a sweet dish made from carrots and lots of sugar). My parents sampled all three and proclaimed that they were all pieces of heaven. Oh well, there's always a next time. And I believe that we will be eating at the Great Kebab Factory in Delhi, as my cousin really wants to go. Can't wait!

Note to self: Make sure to fast for 3 days before you eat at the restaurant.

My Big Fat Indian Wedding-Bhubaneswar, Orissa

After staying in New Delhi for a week, our plan was to stay for two weeks with my dad’s mother in the small city of Bhubaneswar, in Orissa. Bhubaneswar is the capital of the eastern state of Orissa. The language spoken is Oriya, although my dad and his family speak Bengali (since they are from the state of West Bengal, where Bengali is the local language).
The day we reached, we had a wedding to attend. After dressing up in traditional Indian clothes, we departed for the guest house, where we would stay for an hour, chit-chatting with all the relatives. The only problem with that was that although I could understand Bengali, I could not speak a word of it. So after doing pranam to all the elders in the family (essentially touching the feet of the elders as a sign of respect) and nodding when everyone said, “Wow, she’s grown so tall,” the cultural barrier got in the way of any “chit-chatting” that I could have done. After watching the England-Germany game for an hour, we were told that it was time to go to the place where the wedding would take place. The place was only a kilometer away, but as is traditional in Bengali weddings, we were to walk the one kilometer, dancing to the music that was emitted from the truck that was leading the way.
In theory, we should have all been dancing. In reality, it was too hot and humid to dance, but more importantly, the songs were either Bengali songs or old Hindi songs that were slightly difficult to dance for. After spending a good 45 minutes dancing/walking, we finally arrived at the wedding place, where we went to visit the bride. She was wearing the typical Indian wedding dress- a red sari with lots of gold ornaments- and was sitting in a room by herself. Everyone from the boy’s side of the family insisted on taking a picture with her, such that by the end of the night, she must have taken at least one hundred pictures.
Truth be told, I felt a little sorry for the bride. She was surrounded by people she met for the first time, who insisted on taking pictures with her and touching all the gold ornaments that she was wearing. Albeit the fact that she was sitting in an air-conditioned room, the room was not very cold, and she was decked in at least two kilograms of gold, meaning that she was probably feeling hotter than we were. Anyway, after taking pictures with the bride, we left to eat dinner. This was when things became a bit strange. Apparently, tradition dictated that the girl’s family members were not allowed to see the groom, meaning that they had already eaten and left by the time the boy’s family members had arrived. I thought that marriages were a time when both sides of the families met each other, but clearly this was not the case. In addition, while we were eating, the marriage was going on. So while everyone was getting concentrating on the food, the bride and groom were preparing to join their lives together. The actual wedding ceremony was to last for four hours, from 10 pm to 2 am, but most people left around 12 am, meaning that most people didn’t see the actual wedding ceremony take place. They just ate food and left. This wedding seemed to be more a place to eat good food (although our driver later informed us that the food was pretty terrible considering the normal marriage standard of food) with a wedding thrown in on the side.