Any Indian or for that matter any person living on foreign land craves for the home land food..
Same is the case with us after living here in Belgium for last 5 months!
Food is the essential source of life and with ever-evolving food culture, eating to satisfy the tongue rather than stomach has been growing rapidly...
We are no different..! For fulfilling constant cravings for Indian street food, we attended Brussels Indian food festival on 29th July 2018 with great anticipation! Well, it was very big event with many Indian and non-Indians faces. (I suppose non-Indians were larger in number over there.)
Like-minded individuals had put up Indian food stalls and mainly recurring food that topped the list were chat items, pakodas, dosas and nans.
We tasted peas kachori first which was good and very mildly spicy ... even my daughter could eat it easily without asking for water! However, later on she got the Dosa with many black spots and she was not very happy with it so as we! I suppose the seller had not given burnt Dosas to non-Indians. I overheard a passerby “It is not that nice!" Indian in me really felt bad…!
Pani Puri was yummy, but Bhel was not up to the mark and I understand why. We really do not get nice Farsan (Mixture of different types of Sev) over here! So the taste is entirely different. Overall, the food experience was ok kind, as we understand that people putting up the stalls were not professionals but common Indians who love to try different recipes at home! Food was overly priced with the quantity provided. But, organization of such big scale event needs money without which the event becomes difficult to organize.
We were happy with kids section as children could play freely over there…trying out different slides! But main attraction was the dance performances by non-Indians on Bollywood songs. The beats and the dance moves were all Bollywood style...dhink chak!
All in all…different country...different experience...but same echo -
Love for India and Indian food!
On the last note, today when my sis-in-law sent me the monsoon trek pics of yesteryear, I just had nostalgic feelings for Indian monsoon showers, refreshing fragrance of the Mother earth and of course hot onion bhajjis and chai..!
