The Paris Hotel

I don't cook anymore. It wasn't a conscious decision but all of the vegetables I understand have seized to grow and I'm left with what look like a hundred variations of cucumber. The fruit is excellent; lychees, mangoes, pinapples, jack fruit are piled high and provide a kaleidoscopic treat every time I visit the fruit vendors. But the veg... Another reason I don't cook is that I have one gas burner. I'm an incredibly average cook anyway and struggle to whip up anything very edible with a normal cooker. I certainly lack the culinary dexterity to make a meal on a single gas stove. And so I've just stopped. As a result me and Mbaya (a Kenyan volunteer who lives around the corner) have taken to eating out every night. We eat at a place that they say has no name so we have called it the Paris Hotel. Here is a description of our evenings there. It never changes.

The room is painted white and there are white patterned tiles that go half way up the walls. The lights are strip lights and they bleed out through the open front into the heavy dark night in the street. We climb up the concrete step past the huge steel pots with today’s menu inside. The food is overcooked with too many spices. Fish curry, beef curry, stewed mushy yellow vegetables, good thick dhal and mounds of rice. On the opposite side of the entrance there’s man rolling bread dough. He cuts it, rolls it into a long sausage then cuts it into even pieces. His expert hands work quickly like these actions are all they know. He couldn’t get the them to write or shake hands if he tried.He rolls them into balls, pounds them and rolls them flat on a heavy floured table and then throws them onto a big blackened iron skillet heated from a fire below. They smell good. We walk through to the back of the room, the faces look up from their meals and watch us as we go past. They always watch us. At the back there’s a concrete basin that looks more like a feeding trough for animals. Three plastic taps stick out of the wall. There we wash our hands, using some fluorescent pink overly perfumed Lux soap. It’s dotted with what look like dried fruit chunks.Other men are washing their hands, hocking up and spitting into the basin. Revolting. We sit. The Formica tables are chipped and beaten after years of cleaning and plastic plates being passed along them. The benches either side used to be painted a bright orange. Now they’re dilapidated and look rusted rather than painted. Within seconds two plastic plates are shoved under our noses with three hot rotis, giving off some soft floury steam. Sobji or dhal? The man asks. Vegetable or dhal? We both go for dhal and a plate of beef curry. They arrive in little dishes. Methodically I tear into the first roti and roll it up. I scoop up some of the thick dhal and put it in my mouth. It tastes good. With the next piece I tear off a chunk of beef and dip it in the dhal. It tastes better. Then I get the curry juices from the meat dish and mix them into the dhal to make a browny yellowy mess. I continue to work with various combinations of meat, curry, dhal, and roti until all three rotis are gone and I’m left burping. Cha? The man asks. Tea? Yes, less sugar, chini kom. I say. We talk and let the food go down for a few minute until the thick sugary tea arrives in glasses. It’s more like a stew than a drink. Sickly sweet, a rich brown colour with lumps of unpasteurised milk floating lazily in it. We drink it slowly and talk. There’s not much else to do. Sated we walk to the counter at the front and pay. 120taka. From the sharp clinical light we walk into the thick black air. Like Guinness. We hail a rickshaw and set off into the night.