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In December, comedian, actor, and well-known foodie Aziz Ansari traveled to southern India to get in touch with his roots (he’s spent only a few months there over his entire life, he writes in The New York Times). And since he was unfamiliar with the region he was visiting and was feeling like an outsider (he writes about his clothes being a dead giveaway), he went directly to where he knew he’d be able to find a connection: food.
In his article, which you can find here and should read only when you’re not actually hungry, Ansari describes not only getting to know the culture of Trivandrum (and India, in general) through food, but also what it’s like to return to a country you’d only been to as a child, and what it’s like to reconnect with family members you haven’t seen since you were “playing with transformers.” Good news: everyone’s family now over-documents get-togethers, so that’s pretty universal.
Here’s a picture of his family taking pictures of his family despite the pictures being “easily sharable.”
If you come for the poignant musings on culture, however, there’s no way you can leave the article without getting hungry. That’s because Ansari’s food raves are pretty epic. Check out his description of a restaurant he visits in the video above:
I wanted to ask if there were any great nearby restaurants, but my Tamil is a bit shaky. (Although I was fluent as a child, I now use it almost exclusively to have clandestine chats with my family in the company of white people.) I gave it a shot, though, and started asking around — it didn’t hurt that everyone seemed to get what I meant when I said ‘‘tasty.’’ Thanks to a helpful fishmonger, I darted through tiny alleys and up a few flights of an unmarked building to Hotel Mubarak.
In Italy, you know you’ve found a truly authentic restaurant when they don’t have an English menu. In India, it’s when there are no utensils and you must eat with your hands. At Mubarak, there were no forks to be found. As soon as I was seated, a banana leaf was placed in front of me, and the waiter quickly doled out a hefty portion of rice. Other servers came by, offering fried prawns, mackerel and squid with various curries. I nodded when I wanted a serving and because everything looked delicious, I nodded often.
And then there are the photos:
If there’s one complaint to be had about Ansari’s article, it’s that the video accompanying it is far too short. At two minutes, it gives you just enough of a glimpse into his experience, but we could always do with five to seven more, especially if they include him drinking coconut water and chowing down at places with no menus (or forks).
