Monday, January 23, 2006
Biryani in Paradise
Ahh, biryani in Paradise, sounds good right? That's what I thought as well. Hyderabad is actually famous for its biryani, and this restaurant called Paradise is supposed to serve the best in town, according to one of my co-workers anyway. Unfortunately, my experience was pretty much as far from heavenly as you can imagine. But this story really begins on the night before that fateful excursion...
That Thursday night began innocently enough with a few of us trying to go out for dinner. As it happened everybody cancelled except me and another expat from the Dublin office so it was just the two of us for dinner. We went to this place called "Fusion 9" where I had an excellent medium-rare steak which was all the more amazing for the fact that it's pretty well impossible to find beef in this city. We ordered some local wine, identified only as "wine" on the menu, however that was a mistake. The taste of this stuff can only be approximated by rinsing a dirty sock into a glass. Long story short, it was completely foul but we ended up drinking two glasses each anyway. Good wine, or wine period, is somewhat rare 'round these parts as well.
After the excellent meal, only marginally tainted by the foulness of the wine, we went upstairs to the Fusion 9 bar area. It seems to be a pretty popular thing here to have multi-level restaurants, with different themes on different floors. Anyway, the bar was a fairly cool lounge type place with a DJ playing some pretty good trance. Despite it being Thursday night, which is normally a go-out night here as well, the place was completely empty, except the two of us. (I later found out this was because if was the beginning of the Pongal festival and most people stayed home to eat with their families that day.) We hung out at the bar and had a couple of Kingfishers, which apparently taste much better in India than they do in the States. After hanging around this place for a bit and chatting it up we went back to our apartments, and this is where trouble really began.
Our apartments have these balconies, and the fridges are constantly stocked with beer so it doesn't take much effort to have a small impromptu party. My co-worker, who'd also just arrived a couple of days after me, brought along a rather sizeable bottle of gin and in addition to beer our fridges contain large quantities of Tropicana orange juice boxes. It didn't take us long to put two and two together and we were having a pretty good time just chatting and having a few more drinks on the balcony. Before we knew it the sun was coming up over the haze of the polluted Hyderabad sky and we were still up and awake, having consumed half a liter of gin and countless tropicana orange juice boxes. As I mentioned before this was a Thursday night and we still had to "get up" for work soon.
Needless to say, that day at work was no picnic. I had an interview at 11am, which I managed OK since it was a phone screen but by 2:30pm my body gave out and I had to go back to the room for some rest. I actually felt fine, just really tired, so I promised a few of the girls from the office that we'd gone out with earlier in the week that we'd come out to Paradise for some biryani with them later that day. A mistake I would live to regret.
I went home and got some rest and actually felt OK before heading out to the restaurant. However, the trouble with our location in Hyderabad is that the city center, and most interesting destinations along with it, are about a 40 minute drive away. Having spent 40 minutes on windy, poorly paved roads I began feeling extremely car-sick and nauseous. The terrible feeling didn't pass when I got out of the car however. I took a little breather outside but the fresh air wasn't doing the trick. My body was pretty wrecked from the night before and the car ride to the restaurant seemed to have used up whatever strength I had left.
I ended up ordering some lamb biryani which looked delicious when it arrived. Unfortunately, any thought of placing food in my mouth at that stage caused violent spasms in my stomach. Nevertheless, I managed a few bites of the biryani and a couple of the other, undoubtedly delicious, things on the table in front of me. Everybody had a good time poking fun at the fact that I was just sitting there staring at the food but that experience in Paradise was the closest thing to Hell I could imagine at the time. I was feeling utterly wretched.
The ride home was even worse. I managed to keep it together until we dropped off our colleague but finally lost it and regurgitated whatever food I had that day onto the side of the road. I continued feeling sick well into the afternood of the next day. In retrospect, I blame the whole incident on taking my malaria pill after consuming alcohol and not on the drinking and staying up all night per se. In fact, I actually had another similar incident where I got extremely sick a couple of weeks later under similar circumstances (but with far less alcohol) and feel pretty certain that the malaria meds just don't play well with liquor. Anyway, lesson learned! Follow the directions on your prescription medication and heed the warnings!
That Thursday night began innocently enough with a few of us trying to go out for dinner. As it happened everybody cancelled except me and another expat from the Dublin office so it was just the two of us for dinner. We went to this place called "Fusion 9" where I had an excellent medium-rare steak which was all the more amazing for the fact that it's pretty well impossible to find beef in this city. We ordered some local wine, identified only as "wine" on the menu, however that was a mistake. The taste of this stuff can only be approximated by rinsing a dirty sock into a glass. Long story short, it was completely foul but we ended up drinking two glasses each anyway. Good wine, or wine period, is somewhat rare 'round these parts as well.
After the excellent meal, only marginally tainted by the foulness of the wine, we went upstairs to the Fusion 9 bar area. It seems to be a pretty popular thing here to have multi-level restaurants, with different themes on different floors. Anyway, the bar was a fairly cool lounge type place with a DJ playing some pretty good trance. Despite it being Thursday night, which is normally a go-out night here as well, the place was completely empty, except the two of us. (I later found out this was because if was the beginning of the Pongal festival and most people stayed home to eat with their families that day.) We hung out at the bar and had a couple of Kingfishers, which apparently taste much better in India than they do in the States. After hanging around this place for a bit and chatting it up we went back to our apartments, and this is where trouble really began.
Our apartments have these balconies, and the fridges are constantly stocked with beer so it doesn't take much effort to have a small impromptu party. My co-worker, who'd also just arrived a couple of days after me, brought along a rather sizeable bottle of gin and in addition to beer our fridges contain large quantities of Tropicana orange juice boxes. It didn't take us long to put two and two together and we were having a pretty good time just chatting and having a few more drinks on the balcony. Before we knew it the sun was coming up over the haze of the polluted Hyderabad sky and we were still up and awake, having consumed half a liter of gin and countless tropicana orange juice boxes. As I mentioned before this was a Thursday night and we still had to "get up" for work soon.
Needless to say, that day at work was no picnic. I had an interview at 11am, which I managed OK since it was a phone screen but by 2:30pm my body gave out and I had to go back to the room for some rest. I actually felt fine, just really tired, so I promised a few of the girls from the office that we'd gone out with earlier in the week that we'd come out to Paradise for some biryani with them later that day. A mistake I would live to regret.
I went home and got some rest and actually felt OK before heading out to the restaurant. However, the trouble with our location in Hyderabad is that the city center, and most interesting destinations along with it, are about a 40 minute drive away. Having spent 40 minutes on windy, poorly paved roads I began feeling extremely car-sick and nauseous. The terrible feeling didn't pass when I got out of the car however. I took a little breather outside but the fresh air wasn't doing the trick. My body was pretty wrecked from the night before and the car ride to the restaurant seemed to have used up whatever strength I had left.
I ended up ordering some lamb biryani which looked delicious when it arrived. Unfortunately, any thought of placing food in my mouth at that stage caused violent spasms in my stomach. Nevertheless, I managed a few bites of the biryani and a couple of the other, undoubtedly delicious, things on the table in front of me. Everybody had a good time poking fun at the fact that I was just sitting there staring at the food but that experience in Paradise was the closest thing to Hell I could imagine at the time. I was feeling utterly wretched.
The ride home was even worse. I managed to keep it together until we dropped off our colleague but finally lost it and regurgitated whatever food I had that day onto the side of the road. I continued feeling sick well into the afternood of the next day. In retrospect, I blame the whole incident on taking my malaria pill after consuming alcohol and not on the drinking and staying up all night per se. In fact, I actually had another similar incident where I got extremely sick a couple of weeks later under similar circumstances (but with far less alcohol) and feel pretty certain that the malaria meds just don't play well with liquor. Anyway, lesson learned! Follow the directions on your prescription medication and heed the warnings!
