Visiting Bangalore is almost as pleasurable as eating in Bangalore, but when you’re trying something new, and the spices hit you for the first time as being exactly just right for this moment right now, there’s nothing else in the world. Memory is strange, and immensely fascinating, but there’s something peculiar about food and what it does to the senses. The taste buds are connected to the olfactory centers, and this is related to memory in a very profound way. When you are tasting something wonderful for the first time, it does something to the memory itself, and creates something new in your mind. Making memories is intimately connected to the sense of taste then, and you can make as many memories as you like at the wonderful Bangalore restaurants.
Proust wrote most articulately about memory, and particularly this notion, of taste and smell being connected, but I can never remember exactly what he said, or where he said it. It was not in Bangalore, but today, this is a spectacular place to visit, and offers enormous variety for the chowhound. There are plenty of wonderful options on every menu, and it’s possible to taste brand new dishes every single day. When you’re on vacation, it’s a pleasure to eat comfort foods for sure, but it’s also lovely to try out something that will open up the senses.
It’s difficult to find foods cooked in the Shree Vaishanava tradition these days, but their memory still lingers very clearly in the minds of some of the local population. This is a branch of Hindu philosophy that was an all-encompassing tradition, and its foods are remembered in the way of Proust in a collection of recipes by Sampath Iyengar. This is cooking with a great capacity for joy, honoring the sacred capacities of preparing food together as a spiritual observance, and as such, it is a splendid book about a past that is dissolving.
