I went to India for two weeks in August, and let me tell you: I ate some food. Actually, I ate a lot of food. Most of it was homemade, Karnataka style of South Indian. I don’t have much picture evidence of most of it because I ate it so fast. However, I had some fun experiences trying Indian versions of American food as well as some elaborate restaurant food, which will be featured here!
Part One: Snacks
I stayed with my aunt’s family in a small town, which by India’s standards, is 65,000 people. My 7th-grade cousin is obsessed with candy and junk food so naturally, we tried some – or a lot. Below was our haul.
5 Star is a candy bar that is incredibly simple, its a chocolate bar filled with caramel nougat. I strongly dislike caramel, and I dislike nougat. Safe to say, I did not like this treat.
Milkybar is a white chocolate bar. If you made a Hershey’s bar out of white chocolate, this would be it. We accidentally picked up a strawberry version, which was very weird. Also not great.
Now, Dairy Milk is an Indian classic. You don’t typically get Hershey’s or Mars products, so Cadbury is the leader in the market in many places. Its also pretty prominent in Europe. Many people swear by it, but its just a plain old milk chocolate bar to me.
Chocolate Bar Cone Rating: 2 Stars 
The Lays on the other hand were awesome. They come in really tiny packets for 5 rupees each. At current conversion rates, this is like 15 cents. To be fair, there’s only 10 chips in each packet…but the flavors are infinitely better. They’re actually more like Ripples or Ruffles that we have here, they’re ridged chips. The Spanish tomato tango tastes like a spicy ketchup, and the hot ‘n’ sweet chili is really yummy too.
Chips Cone Rating: 3.5 Stars 
Part Two: Fancy Dinner
Last Saturday, my aunt’s family, my grandpa and I went out to a restaurant for dinner. It’s pretty typical that good restaurants are attached to hotels, and even if they aren’t, they’re all called hotels anyways. Not sure why, but that’s how it is. We had a lot of fish dishes, featuring local fish that I definitely did not know the names of.
Overall, everything was ridiculously spicy. Like take one bite and your mouth is burning spicy. Imagine eating the Blazin’ sauce at BDubs on one type of fish, then attempting to try two more types that are just as spicy. The finger chips (french fries) were a much needed palate cleanser. Thank god for potatoes.
We were able to cool off with ice cream at the end. My cousin had a chocolate cone, which he aptly remarked was no where near as good as American chocolate ice cream. I had a simple vanilla cup, about which I came to a similar conclusion. It was necessary in the moment to save my mouth, but the flavors seemed like an imitation. My aunt had a kulfi pot. Kulfi is a traditional north indian dairy dessert. Its similar to ice cream, but more dense and custard like. This one had cashews and came in a handmade clay pot.
Overall, this restaurant had good quality food, we just couldn’t handle the spice, which made the experience hard to enjoy.
Cone Rating: 3.5 Cones
Part Three: Fast Food Fun!
On our journey back, my dad and I ate dinner in the Mumbai Airport. I had my eyes on trying Indian fast food. Because my grandpa and aunt live in small towns, we don’t have access to chain restaurants that are only in big cities. I tried Burger King, and damn it was good.
I don’t eat Burger King normally in the US, but fast food in India is very vegetarian and non-beef-eater friendly. Many of the menu items were the same, but instead of a beef patty, you could have a veggie patty or a chicken patty. I had a veggie whopper and fries. This sandwich was huge, insinuated by its name.
Honestly, it was so freaking good. The veggie patty wasn’t just imitation mush like many patties are here – you could see the pieces of corn, potato, and carrots. The potato base was crispy on the outside. The best part – it was genuinely spicy! Unlike bland fast food America, this was an actual meal. The fries were good too, thinner and crispy, like they should be. Maybe I was way too happy about a Burger King meal…but i’m not ashamed. I mean, look at it!
Cone rating: 4.5 stars. Loved it. 
This is just a fraction of what I ate in India, but I hope you can get a fun taste of restaurant food in Karnataka. Keep in mind, all of the food I ate at home was wayyy better, but I couldn’t take pictures of eeeeeeverything. Sadly.
The Bottom Line
I had fun, and ate some weird candy, spicy fish, and dang good fast food.
Cone Rating: 4 cones
aditi eats 