An almost authentic English afternoon

It's like the tube, but in Delhi


For those of you who haven't been to London the joke may not be as completely obvious as it was to me. Even my friend from Delhi didn't understand it. This place has a couple pubs and restaurants and a movie theater (or theatre) and is almost english. Of course, somehow you can get no better curry than in London, partly because of all the Indians there, and partly because they maintain much higher sanitation standards. Nevertheless we stopped in a restaurant and had some biryani. It was decent, I've had better and worse biryanis. In the restaurant however, there was a placard describing what craft beer is and how this is the first restaurant to carry craft beer in India. My hopes rose that I might get good beer once again. Afterall, it's been more than two months since I had a beer that I would rate above a 3/10. I see they have Paulaner, not exactly my description of a "Craft beer," but I like it well enough and after months of kingfisher's shitty shitty beer I was ready for due relief.

What's that you say? You're out of paulaner? You never even had it? It's simply on the menu, but you don't have it? What about this other "craft beer" from germany? You don't have that either? UGH!

Well, I settles once again for Tubourg, a Danish concoction which isn't absolutely horrible, it's just normal mediocre bad eurostyle lager. After the restaurant we go downstairs to a pub named the drunken duck. I see for english blokes playing cards and cricket on one telly, football on another and I think, this place seems ALRIGHT! Hey, they have kingfisher on tap! Oh no! That's the ONLY thing they have on tap. What's that, the bar waitron tells me it's the best beer they have. I ask if it's skunky. He offers me a taste. The taste was completely pleasant because he served it to me in a shot glass that had recently been filled with rum and not properly washed since. I told him so, he gave me another taste. Of course, it was terrible. I ordered some other beer called "sandpiper." Too my chagrin it's the same stupid eurostyle lager with no flavor. On the way out I saw that they had a map of the london tube in the pub, so I pointed out to my friend that "PICCADELHI" is a play on "PICCADILLY." I don't think he was amused like I was. He smiled graciously at my amusement and so we walked out into the densely foggy afternoon that was New Delhi. I left the pub with a small sense of ire that I can't get good beer, and felt the fog hit me like a london afternoon. It was NEARLY AUTHENTIC.