UDUPI PALACE
Michelle Sindha Thomas
I hopped off BART at 16th and decided to stroll down Valencia on the one warm summer night of the year. I’d just finished a Bollywood dance class at Salesforce Park and had pep in my step—I wasn’t ready for the night to be over. The street was alive with night bikers fully utilizing their center lane, hipsters and techies spilling out of bars or waiting in lines for dinner. I nibbled a lacy Florentine from Dandelion Chocolate. Slightly hit the spot; I topped it off with a few tiny samples of Indian and Ecuadorian dark chocolate chunks and went back into the hot night. I was buzzing. I stopped a few steps away at my old-faithful-minimum-twice-weekly-dinner-date, Souvla, staring uncomprehending at a short, familiar menu of Cali-Greek cuisine that has not changed for the past three years. I kept walking.
Valencia Street was quieting as I approached the less hopping southerly blocks, and my options were dwindling. I had to decide now or head home for my own Spartan cooking, boiled chicken, and a few episodes of Royal Pains. Not tonight. The fluorescent lights of one storefront beamed, urgently, as if to me directly, an indisputable beacon. I crossed the street diagonally. I would have dinner at Udupi Palace.
I don’t even like Udupi Palace. Papa and I tried it before and decided, without need for discussion, that our meal was an utter disappointment. We had both heard rave reviews from people who don’t have much experience with dosas. We were skeptical, put it off for years, but one day when he was in town and we were desperate for dosas and had pushed dinner until it was too late to book a table at Copra, we confirmed our suspicion of this latest iteration of Udupi Palace: two brown thumbs down, it belongs in the same sad bucket as every Udupi Palace in every major American city.
Still, I went in. The place was full and I had to wait a few minutes for my table for one. There were multicultural groups of boys at several tables, a few neo-emo youth with green and purple frizzy hair. I spoke Spanish to the busser who split apart a set of tables and handed me a sticky menu. I would order what I always ordered, a long and lightweight paper dosa, but looked over the choices for fun, pondered finishing my meal with kulfi or a falooda. As I sat waiting to order, a party of two took the table next to me. They seemed to be on a third date or perhaps they worked at the same company and he had a deep crush on and a strong desire to please her. She was about my age, an Everlane-clad, apparently Indian corporate girlie who was calling all the shots in this situationship, re-directing his conclusions on their observations about people at work, authoritatively and exhaustively listing the ingredients in every dish on the menu. He appeared East Asian, with a curly perm and the most cooperative spirit. He asked oh so many follow up questions and she dutifully explained the purposes of tamarind and turmeric and Ayurveda. The busser came for my order: “Una paper dosa, por favor.”
As the wilted and asymmetrical paper dosa was set before me, I felt a corresponding wave of relief that had nothing to do with the food. In that swift movement of the dosa passing across my sightline, I was suddenly awash with the recognition that I would marry an Indian man. My body had been held in throes of tension in the moments before, as I eavesdropped on the conversation beside me—I had been internally nodding approval at how the Indian girl deftly explained the most curious aspects of our cuisine, clutched the edge of my seat in anticipation and then marveled at the way she rationalized the most questionable Indian traditions. Her curly-permed date was absolutely agreeable, but, oh, the effort of it all! How many times I’ve been in her position, explaining that no, there will not be chickens on our flight to India; no, I’m actually Christian; no, in fact I’m bad at both science and mathematics; no relation to the Cherokee. As my limp, pale dosa descended, a curtain of agitation fell away from me—I did not have to defend it. I could gobble it down, fully aware and accepting that it was a pathetic dosa, a downright bad dosa, yet it was just a dosa—not my responsibility, not my crime, not an artifact representing me, mine, or the value of my being.
My Indian husband and I would look with disappointment at the dosa and pick at it anyway, a fresh complaint following each mouthful. He would correct my pronunciation of dosa and I’d tell him to shove it, that’s how my mother says it, and that’s good enough for me, and then I would accuse him of male chauvinism, which we both know is our shameful cultural heritage; we would sit in acknowledgement for a moment before changing the subject in a silent truce. We’d look askance at the steel dish holding a bowl of sambar with absolutely no vegetables in it and the three wells of chutney one could only call orange, white, and green. We would be appalled by the chutneys, but still consume them, relishing that, added bonus, neither of us would be responsible for telling a story about cows on crowded trains to distract from the missing tomatoes, coconut, or mint (“But it doesn’t taste like mint”). Together we would eat, with our hands, of course, in tacit condonation of the likely kitchen conditions, bonded by the risk of food poisoning we were facing together, eyes wide open.
We would wipe the last chutney well shiny clean and decide we could not waste another calorie on Udupi Palace (if their dosa was so cold their falooda might be warm). My Indian husband would whine about how early San Francisco goes to sleep and I’d agree; together we would fan each other’s flames, making ourselves angrier and angrier over this state of affairs. “What if I request a transfer to New York City?” he’d ask. “Too cold in the winter,” I’d remind him, wondering aloud if they have an office in Paris. He would roll his eyes at me and check to see whether the ice cream place was still open. “If we hurry we can make it,” he’d say. The ice cream place is in our second-favorite neighborhood, one that stays up late and makes noise, one that feels like Bombay at night.