The Imperfect Post - Veg Meals @ Zebra Spot

“It has been long time since having food from hometown – where to order from???”, “There is place called Zebra Spot” – It was during my first year of studies that I heard this name for the first time. Then it became my usual spot for food during Sundays when canteen is not open. This was 4 years ago in 2016 when Zomato and Swiggy didn’t exist in Manipal. Even since they started, I do order from them once in a while. It was during the first week of March when I went there first time.

Since I was missing my home town and the food there, I ordered a Veg Meals. The restaurant was giving a 20% discount offer. The price was Rs. 100; Rs. 80 with the offer but with the delivery charges the total came to Rs. 110. So, just went ahead and placed the order. I was indeed excited and that was when I remembered that I forgot to include any cooking instructions !!! Fortunately I was about to set it up quickly. It said that the order will take 44 minutes to deliver and seeing that made my hunger increase. So, to put out “that fire”, I had a drink and when I refreshed the order tracking screen, it said that the Swiggy Partner will arrive in 8 minutes. So, everything happened quite fast.

Got the parcel and opened it out of hunger. The rice had gone cold. Other than the rice, there were 4 more packets having Pickle, Buttermilk, Sambar and one more item (will say later). I put rice, sambar, pickle on my plate and also the other curry (we do have a lot of types of curries all along Kerala and I guess it’s one of them). Anyways, the sambar was good. The pickle was made with raw mango and it had the taste of Vinegar. My mother had told me that Vinegar is mostly used in the Northern regions. Now the next curry and also the highlight was the Cucumber Pachadi. Usually in my hometown, cucumber is chopped finely to aid with the cooking process and hence are usually cooked well. Here the pieces are much bigger and hence just cooked enough.