Desi Dhaba at Niagara

After a 10 hour drive from Chicago , you are greeted to a great site when you get near the Niagara falls. Desi/Punjabi Dhabas and chaat shops all over the place. It was like getting into a mini Pondy Bazaar. The first thing that we did after parking the car in a remote car park was to walk up to this 'Desi Dhaba' and look up at the menu. And all my favourites were available. I was on cloud 9 seeing Chole Batura, Naan ,Dosa/Sambar, Lassi , Mango Lassi etc. on the menu. We ordered one of each ( considering that we were three hungry souls after a tiring 10 hour journey) from the menu. And then it happened. Our man starts opening the "ready to eat" packets and starts putting them on the tava. Bang all that euphoria of seeing your favourite dishes listed on the menu gets drained in a second. We consoled ourselves saying atleast it was desi food and managed to eat the stuff. As we polished the plates off , our Lassi arrived. Another wave of euphoria swept us as the glasses arrived. With reserved optimism (it had to be reserved after what we had tasted) , one of my friends sipped the lassi. The look on his face told us what we wanted to know. We ended up pouring 4/5th of the lassi into the bins as we left cursing the dhaba.

To paraphrase Vivek and a dialogue from Thillu Mullu-- Menu va paathu mayangidathinga makkalae. Yellam verum eye waasnga(eye Wash).