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Oman, nostalgia and Paratha


Oman, nostalgi and Paratha 

My ex boyfriend was from Oman, a country bordering Saudi and Yemen. With many Indians migrating to Oman to find work, his family too moved over from India. We met at an open mic in London and I was so excited to have met another fellow human who was just as passionate about food. He didn’t turn out to be a very pleasant partner, but he did introduce me to something very special...Paratha, and that is how we immediately connected. 

Paratha is a flat bread, originating from the Indian subcontinent and ranges from one region to the other. There are a million different types of Paratha but my favourite is the South Indian paratha. ‘Parat’ and ‘atta’ literally means ‘layers of cooked dough’.


I had my first bite of Paratha when I went to visit him in Oman. Paratha was the foundation for most of our meals. We ate it with curries, Biryanis, Daal, spiced scrambled eggs… everything. I couldn’t get enough of it. The flakiness. How the buttery thin layers melted in my mouth. When my ex and I broke up, it felt like I had broken up with Parathas. Yes, it’s possible to feel like you’ve broken up with a food. I was nostalgic for the memories we’d shared together, so I started to search for the food that brought us together. I've learnt more and more that so much of food is about memory. 




I came back to the UK craving Parathas but I couldn’t seem to find a homemade Paratha that was as heavenly as the ones in Oman. I searched London like a headless chicken, trying desperately to find a decent Paratha, only to find that they were either too oily or not the style I was looking for. Perhaps some chefs thought Westerners wanted it oily. Perhaps it is what the Westerners wanted. I was deeply saddened that I couldn’t find a home cooked Paratha in London, a city with such a rich indian cuisine. Many people I spoke to had never even heard of Paratha. My curiosity persisted and I started stopping by at local Middle Eastern supermarkets to buy packets of frozen Parathas to cook. They were surprisingly better than any I’d eaten in a restaurant. The next thing I knew, I was frequently inviting friends round for dinner and serving Parathas with our meal. I saw that same look in their eyes that I had when I first tried Paratha. It was a look of amazement. One friend asked “how have I never tried a flatbread like this?”. I wondered this myself. I only wished that they could try the ones I’d eaten in Oman. I desperately wanted to share that memory of happiness with them. With there being popular flatbreads such as Naan and Roti in the West, why was it that one of the most popular flat breads in India was still not that well known in the UK.

Years passed and I finally found two of my favourite restaurants that serve Paratha. Well, that’s not entirely true, one of them serves Paratha and the other serves Malaysian Roti, which I’m convinced is the same as South Indian Paratha.

I lived in Leeds (West Yorkshire) for a couple of years, which is where I discovered a Keralan restaurant called Tharavadu. This is probably the most authentic Keralan restaurant I’ve been to outside of India. When I tried their Parathas, I finally felt as though I found closure on my Paratha journey. It was spot on.
http://www.tharavadurestaurants.com/ 

 Image result for tharavadu leeds

The second is Roti King. This is a Malaysian Restaurant hidden away in a basement on a little side street in Kings Cross, London. There’s usually a queue going all the way outside the restaurant but it’s worth the wait for those Malaysian Rotis. 
http://rotiking.info/
Image result for Roti king

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