Coming from land of spices, one would expect that I would love spices. All my fellow countrymen do and look at me oddly, probably thinking how snobbish I am when I say that I don’t like spicy food.
Lot of people have myths that true ethnic food needs to be spicy. I have tasted lot of ethnic food not just from my country but other countries too and the essence of good food is not based on how spicy it is but based on how much flavor it has.
My friends and I went to have Thai food for lunch yesterday. It’s always a hit and miss when you go to places where they ask you for level of spiciness. Taste is relative, when I say mild, I really expect mild or bland but unfortunately mild is high in restaurant lingo. I should have told – no spice but what’s the point of eating ethnic food then.
There are however some ethnic restaurants who make their point by just adding more spices or making the food spicy rather than concentrating on the flavor. Like I went to this Srilankan restaurant the other day and I have relatives who are from SriLanka and I would die to eat their food – it’s just so yummy and not spicy. But one of the key ingredients of SriLankan food is coconut and spices but this restaurant had it all messed up and what I got instead was food mixed with a spicy paste, clearly not what I wanted.
Anyway, I was telling my mom about this spice story and how much people bully me for not being able to take spicy food. She told me something very interesting. Apparently she craved for spicy food when she was pregnant with me and ate a lot of spicy chilies during her pregnancy. Probably those made me hate chilies now 🙂 Will never be sure about that.
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