chicken tikka is a chicken meal in India

Indian chicken tikka

Travel Tales: Search for a Chicken Meal

It took me three days to find a chicken meal in Amritsar city, India.

I had come to this small northern city to visit the astounding Golden Temple, the most revered temple of the Sikh religion. To be more specific, I was staying at the Golden Temple, which offers all sorts of accommodation for pilgrims.

one of my photos of Golden Temple of Amritsar India

For foreign visitors they provide a free private dormitory, guarded night and day by turban-ed Sikh holy men. No local people are allowed inside. It’s an amazingly thoughtful and kind gesture on part of the temple.

Golden Temple’s vast dining hall

I already knew that the free, round-the-clock meals served by the temple to all visitors, no matter the race, religion, color, age or gender, were strictly vegetarian. And I was not surprised that restaurants immediately adjacent to the temple were vegetarian as well.

However, I’d also read in my guidebook that Amristar is famous for its northern Indian cuisine, including a special fried fish and tandoori chicken.

Since my body does not fare well on a purely vegetarian diet, nor my digestive system deal well with beans and legumes, I planned to sample those famous Amritsar meat dishes once a day.

Little did I know how difficult that would be!

Here’s the low down:

LashWorldTour eating at Golden Temple dining hall

here I am eating at Golden Temple dining hall

Day 1

I arrived in Amritsar at noon and I ate my first meal in the temple’s massive dining hall with thousands of other pilgrims. It was quite a unique experience (which I’ll detail in my upcoming post about the Golden Temple).

Later that afternoon I set out for my first sample of Amritsar’s famous tandoori chicken. I scoured my guidebook to find any meat-serving restaurants near the temple. A German girl helped me by searching through her guidebook as well.

Since it was my very first day in a real Indian city, and since it was getting late, I did not want to venture far. I simply wanted to walk a short way, sit down and eat some chicken.

milk-carrying bicycle

Finally I found the only meat-serving restaurant near the temple that was listed in our guidebooks. It was at a small hotel just a 5-10 minute walk away. Perfect.

I set out and located the hotel quite easily. I walked in excitedly, my mouth almost watering with thoughts of tandoori chicken…

Then the hotel clerk informed me that they had closed their restaurant. Bummer. But never mind, I could go to a different place.

I asked him where I could eat tandoori chicken nearby. He and his colleagues shook their heads, they pondered, they rolled their eyes. No, they didn’t know any places nearby. Instead, they directed me to an entirely different section of the city. An area that I’d have to reach by a 30-45 minute taxi ride!

What was that? In order for me to eat chicken I’d have to ride the whole way across the city by taxi for half an hour? That was nuts.

I gave up and went to a large vegetarian restaurant nearby, where I ate a very delicious palak paneer (pureed spinach with soft cheese chunks) with naan bread. That happens to be my long-standing favorite Indian vegetable dish, so I was perfectly happy.

palak paneer & naan

Day 2

The German traveler’s guidebook recommended an Indian restaurant serving the famous Amritsari fried fish and chicken just outside the Old City Gate. The Golden Temple lies in the center of the old city. I decided to go out there to eat tandoori chicken.

I’d already walked halfway to that city gate yesterday to eat at the vegetarian restaurant, so I knew the way and the distance. I also felt more confident now walking through the congested city roads. They felt relatively safe and manageable. I figured it was about a 20-minute walk, and that proved correct.

The restaurant was located in a place called the Pink Plaza. I supposed that to be a small to medium sized shopping mall, possibly a pink color. When I reached the location, map in hand, there were no big buildings at all, save an old crumbled demolished building, ironically a pink color.

streets of Amritsar

I asked a policeman for Pink Plaza. He pointed in the direction of a bunch of small shops. Wandering around there looking for a large building, I finally asked a shop keeper who informed me that the collection of shops was Pink Plaza. Oh! Not a building but a small neighborhood of shops. Ok.

I wandered around, scouring every shop for the restaurant, and finally located it on the far edge of the shopping area. However, it looked exceedingly dirty. Slabs of raw chicken lay on the counter. Even if they’d looked sanitary enough to eat, obviously they were nowhere near being cooked or ready to serve as tandoori chicken.

I immediately gave up and walked all the way back to the vegetarian restaurant, where I ordered palak paneer again. Quite unfortunately, by that time I was so hungry that I had an energy crash waiting for my food. Even after eating, it took me hours to recover my energy. The rest of the day, in fact.

The affect of a no-meat diet was already making its mark. Tomorrow I had to eat meat, come rain, hail or sand storm!

autorickaws in Amritsar – aka tuk-tuks

Day 3

Today I had to eat some meat, no matter what. No matter how far I had to go, how much I had to pay a taxi, or how many hours of my day it took to do so. I decided I’d just have to go with the hotel clerk’s recommendation for the chicken restaurant all the way across the city.

I returned to the hotel to get the details: name of the restaurant and exact location. Luckily, they had an auto-rickshaw driver on hand who knew the place. Apparently it was the most famous tandoori chicken restaurant in Amritsar. Great!

That day I set out well before I got hungry to make sure I wouldn’t have another energy crash.

Negotiating the price for the taxi, I finally got the driver down to 80 rp, one way. That alone was the usual price I paid for a meal in India. Going there and back, meant I’d have to pay the equivalent of two meals just to get to the restaurant!

Then of course I’d have to pay for the meal, which by that time I figured must be expensive if it’s so uncommon to eat meat in that city. But what could I do?

At that point I could care less how much I had to pay. I was going to get those protein calories I needed to start feeling healthy again. I was exceedingly excited to be eating chicken soon!

traffic in Amritsar

We set out and about 20 minutes later we reached the famous chicken restaurant. Yeah!

On second thought, uh, oh. The restaurant most certainly did not look open… But at least people were in the restaurant. They were cleaning. No chicken or food in sight. I was informed they opened at 1 pm. It was now 11 am. Dag, I certainly was not going to wait 2 hours to eat!

I asked for a different place where I could eat chicken now. The driver and restaurant staff chatted a long while. Then finally my driver said, “Come. Let’s go.” and off we went to another section of the city to find me some chicken.

bicycle trishaw in Amrtisar

He pulled over at a very upscale-looking restaurant, complete with gold doors. Uh, oh. Just a minute, I’d better check the menu first. Turns out it was an international upscale restaurant with cuisine from all over the world. And, of course, outrageously high prices.

Dagnabit! All I wanted was a very simple, ordinary, well-known Indian chicken meal called tandoori chicken. I was in India, for God’s sake. Couldn’t I find a simple Indian restaurant serving a simple Indian dish?

I went back to my driver, flabbergasted.

Quite luckily, while I was inside perusing the gourmet menu, my driver had spotted just such a place a few doors down. We walked over, hoping for the best. A cook was there churning out hot naan bread from the tandoori oven. That was promising. But they informed us they opened at noon. It was 11:30. I could wait until noon.

At this point, I’d been searching for chicken for three days, and today for one hour so far. Good thing I started searching well before I was hungry!

Things finally turned in my favor. Because none of the restaurant staff nor my driver spoke English very well, they couldn’t understand my question, “At what time can I actually eat?” (Opening time and serving the meal time are not necessarily the same after all.)

From all my gesticulating, pointing at my watch, and repeated questions phrased in different ways, they all became quite exasperated and seemed to think that I was upset and needed to eat immediately.

They started saying, “ Ok, ok. No problem. It’s ready now.” A guy pulled some chicken out of a deep freezer and asked me to select the pieces I wanted. He said it would be ready in 5 minutes and urged me to sit down inside. Frozen chicken ready in 5 minutes?! Yeah, right. I settled in for a long wait.

glorious tandoori chicken!

To my great astonishment, literally within 5 minutes I was served a plate of piping hot, thoroughly-cooked tandoori chicken and naan.

After searching three days for a chicken meal, ironically I was served the most quickly-prepared meal in all my travels through India!

Man, oh man, was that tandoori chicken delicious! My eyes were rolling. Joy surged through my body. And within an hour I finally felt my strength and vigor return. Ah, protein!

I enjoyed the meal so much that I had the same taxi driver take me back the following day for my second dose of chicken protein power. Once again, the guy pulled frozen chicken from the freezer and within 5 minutes it was served.

I finally figured out how they managed that ‘miracle’. Obviously the chicken was already cooked before freezing. After removing it from the freezer, it only took a few minutes to un-thaw and heat up in the oven. Brilliant!

QUESTIONS:

Have you ever had trouble finding food during your travels?

Do you need to eat meat protein regularly like me, or are you ok long-term with vegetarian fare?

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You might also like:

Photo Gallery of the Golden Temple of Amritsar

My Eventful Arrival In India: Troubles Galore Without Even Leaving the Airport!

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