Watermelon Gazpacho and Idli

What a treat at our first Chennai breakfast at the Westin Hotel to experience watermelon gazpacho, which quickly became Sarah’s favorite. We had arrived at the Anna International Terminal on our first visit in 2016 around midnight and finally turned out the lights by 2am after changing some dollars into rupees so we could vastly over tip the fellows who rolled our bags up to the room. Following everyone’s advice, though, we set the alarm fairly early so we could snap right into India Standard Time, which happens to be ten and a half hours ahead of Eastern Standard. (And that’s another story, of course.)

With a full day of culinary exploration planned, including brunch at the Park Hyatt with our host, Deb Lee, and dinner at the dim sum restaurant back at the Westin, we decided to keep breakfast simple and grab a quick bite in the club room on our floor.

“Two coffees, please, with cream if you have it.” We returned the engaging smile from the young man who greeted us and offered us a table by the windows in the small dining room where we were the only guests.

“Yes, sir. Your room number, sir?”

Following the exchange of our room number, which everyone on the staff seemed to know by heart from that second on, (9014) he smiled again, “Cappuccino?”

“Coffee is fine.”

“Espresso?”

“Just coffee is fine. With cream, please.”

“Ah, two milk coffees?”

“Okay, milk coffees, thanks.”

After a few minutes, while we watched a group of young men in cricket whites warming up in the stunning sunshine below us on the pitch across the street, our milk coffees arrived, and they were indeed, milk . . . coffees.

Lots of milk, a bit of coffee. Quite tasty in their own way, but hardly Starbucks dark roast.

We had just completed our first challenge in the recognition that the world does not see things just as we do from our own narrow, in its own way parochial, perspective.

The best news was that we also discovered idli, a soft, round, startlingly white savoury cake made from steamed fermented black lentils and rice. Quite pliable and delightful with the chicken and veggies on my plate, it’s a specialty of South India and is used instead of the naan we’re more used to seeing in midwestern Indian restaurants. Little did I know that I should have ladled some sambar over it the way it’s done as a typical south Indian breakfast. Sambar is a fragrant stew of lentils and other vegetables in a broth spiced with turmeric. Along with watermelon gazpacho, idli was the first of many new tastes and a delightful guidepost on our way through the rich offerings in Chennai.

Those, and milk coffee, of course.

Author: David Hassler

David M. Hassler was fortunate enough to have become a relatively rare male Trailing Spouse when his talented wife Sarah accepted a job teaching music in the elementary division of the American International School in Chennai, India, in 2017. His role included, for more than three years there, serving as her everything wallah, but also allowed him time for exploring, discovering, and sharing new places, new faces, and new tastes around Chennai, throughout south India, and beyond. When the pandemic arrived, Sarah retired and they moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where they continue to live and love life. David M. Hassler is a long-time member of the Indiana Writers Center Faculty and holds an MFA from Spalding University. His work has been published in Maize and the Santa Fe Writers' Project. He served as a Student Editor for The Louisville Review and as Technical Editor for Writing Fiction for Dummies. He is currently the Fiction Editor for Flying Island, an online literary journal. He is co-author of Muse: An Ekphrastic Trio, and Warp, a Speculative Trio, and future projects include A Distant Polyphony, a collection of linked stories about music and love, memories and loss; and To Strike a Single Hour, a Civil War novel that seeks the truth in one of P T Barnum's creations. He is a founding partner in Boulevard Press. View all posts by David Hassler