Of Lunch and Conversations at Bawarchi, Intercontinental, Bangkok

When I travel I usually eat local food. I am a vegetarian but I do not hanker over Indian food while I am traveling. heck I like to travel so much that I could eat just bread and butter and never complain as long I get to see new places or even revisit old ones. But when I get to eat Indian food on in a foreign land once in a while, I thoroughly enjoy it! Bawarchi Intercontinental Bangkok was one such delightful experience because of the food and the conversation!

It was one of the Songkran days when we landed at Bawarchi! I was whispering to one of our team-members if I was inappropriately dressed in shorts. I was dressed for Songkran. In walked another dressed and all the unease about my dress vanished straight away! Compared to him I was dressed to meet the queen!

The Beer Saga

There were five of us in the group, three women and two men. When we were asked for our choice of our beverages three of us opted for beer and two for buttermilk. I was the lone women giving the men company for drinking beer. Arpti and Gairav came up with a tag line for the other two girls- “Buttermilk in Bangkok!” And that became the butt for so many jokes! I was the eldest in the group and other young people would anyway spare me a lot of jokes, but thankfully I was not drinking the buttermilk!

The Food

It started with masala papad and beer for us and buttermilk for the buttermilk girls, Vaishali and Manjulika! After not having Indian food for a few days I had a new appreciation for the masala papad!

The starters were delicious, we had Paneer Tikka ajwaini  and Tandoori Brocolli for vegetarians and Tandoori King Prawn and Tandoori Lamb Chops for the non-vegetarians. The non-vegetarians were of course welcome to the vegetarian options!

If you ask my honest opinion I was full with the starters and I would have happily called it a day. By now the buttermilk excitement had gone down. But a new one came up within no time. It was a Tuesday. And many Indians do not eat non-veg food on Tuesday due to religious regions. One of us decided to go ahead and eat it. Within no time she was declared ‘Khuni Darinde.’ We were laughing so much that we had to remind ourself that we might be disturbing others! One of the staff responded- “You guys are in Songkran mood!”

By the time the main course arrived. It was Butter Chicken and Rogan josh for non-vegetarians and Saag Paneer, Daal Makhani and Hyderabadi Biryani for everyone with assorted flat Indian breads. The dessert was Gulab Jamun.

We had so much fun while having the delicious food that we never realized that we were getting late for our Songkran fun! If you are craving Indian food in Thailand in lavish surroundings look no further than Bawarchi.