From the outside, the India Bazaar looked like any other regular store. It had a brightly lit sign, glass windows, and a parking lot with only a few cars in it. Having never been to an Indian store, I was not sure what to expect. So when we first arrived at the bazaar, I was surprised at how similar the outside looked compared to the other stores on the block. However, the inside was a different story. The first thing that hit me was the smell. The aroma was unlike anything I had experienced before. It was a smell of food uniquely different from any other type of food I had smelled before–whether American, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, or Japanese. After adjusting to the smell, I looked around and took in the sights of the India Bazaar. To me, it was very different than traditional American grocery stores, but was not unlike Korean or Chinese stories in terms of the atmosphere it created.

Taking a lap around the store, I marveled at all the interesting Indian products that I had never seen before. But the real centerpiece of the trip was the food. As Arijit Sen says, “The importance of food in immigrant culture makes restaurants, grocery stores, and kitchens important sites where ethnicity is practiced and reproduced on a daily basis” (Sen 198). At the little cafe in the front, I ordered a dish called “Bhel Puri,” not knowing quite sure what it was.

At first, I was a little hesitant, not knowing what I ordered, and when it came out, I still didn’t know. It looked so strange and foreign to me. After I tried it though, I was glad that I did. The Bhel Puri was amazing. It tasted like nothing I had ever tried before. It was crunchy and sweet, but also salty and mushy. All the different spices used mixed together to make a taste that strangely worked, even though many of the flavors were conflicting. The real genius of the Indian street food came out in the Indian water, though…

All in all, I would highly recommend a visit to the India Bazaar, or any other similar kind of Indian store and cafe. I had a great experience there, and the food was so unique I doubt I would be able to find it anywhere else except small stores like this and in India itself. I was very pleased with my experience there, and will likely visit it again someday.

 

“From Curry Mahals to Chaat Cafes: Spatialities of the South Asian Culinary Landscape.” Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia. Ed. Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas. Berkeley: U of California, 2012. 196-218. Print.