Once I met this journalist online who sounded like a very interesting, fun person. We talked for a while, and then he invited me to a restaurant.
“What kind of food do you like?” he asked.
“Oh, I love Indian food,” I said.
“Well, that’s fantastic because this is my favorite food, too!”
So we went to an Indian restaurant I really liked. At the restaurant, I ordered vindaloo because I adore it.
“I love this dish!” my date exclaimed. “I’ll order it, too.”
Two minutes after we started eating, though, I noticed something was wrong. My date became very red, and sweat gathered on his forehead.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he said. “The food is delicious.”
After a very short while, he started hyperventilating. Tears were streaming down his face.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled and ran to the bathroom.
“What happened?” I asked when he came back looking completely sick.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m allergic to pepper.”
“Then why on Earth did you order this?”
“I wanted you to think we had things in common,” was his response.
I didn’t want this good person to do any permanent damage to his health for the sake of impressing me, so I refused to see him again.
“I can’t believe you are dumping me just because I don’t like Indian food!” he kept saying the entire time I was telling him we shouldn’t see each other any longer.
Who knows, he might be posting a story on his blog right now about this weird lady who dumped him for not liking Indian food.
Clarissa's Blog 
Moral of story: curry is awesome.
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This guy is like that joker in the Looney Tunes who drinks the tabasco. Turns red, explodes with sweat, ass on fire. Did he transform into a rocket ship and drain a horse trough?
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I’m sure he would have if I’d taken him to, say, a German restaurant. 🙂
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I would have found this individual just plain insulting. How dumb must he think you were that you wouldn’t be able to figure out that he didn’t eat Indian food!
On the other hand – I do love Indian food – despite the effect it has on me. And I love to try different ethic dishes – sometimes with dire consequences. But I would never try to ‘fool’ someone. That’s just immature.
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We had a job candidate once who didn’t like Indian food. Bland personality too. Wouldn’t have gotten the job anyway, but that was not a good omen.
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Ah! I never made a connection between my fiery personality and my love of Indian food!! 🙂
What does the fact that I can’t stand Thai food say about me, I wonder. 🙂
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You are fiery, but only in avenues of your own choosing.
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I think I might drop my psychoanalyst now and ask you to take me on as a patient instead. 🙂
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I am available.
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Interesting. I love Indian food.
I love Thai food almost as much.
Chinese and Japanese, less so.
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I live for Japanese food!!! I’m kind of indifferent to Chinese. But the one I really don’t get is Vietnamese. It doesn’t look at all recognizable to me.
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Curiouser and curiouser! We have a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant in my town. Every time I go to it, the food is really good! But, I have been only four times, I think, in the last decade. It is just not a cuisine that comes to mind when I want to dine out, for the most part. I have no idea why.
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And I also don’t like Mexican food. I love Peruvian, Argentinean, Cuban. But Mexican is simply not for me. It’s too dry and uninspiring. (And I’m not even talking about Tex-Mex which is way too weird for me.)
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You and David have to try Indian-Chinese food, Clarissa! It’s the cuisine evolved by Chinese people settled in India — it’s limited, but really very good!
I have a few Indo-Chinese recipes here: http://saucethefoodblog.blogspot.com/p/indian-chinese.html
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Priyanka, which of those recipies do you think is the most likely to be successful first time?
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My first visit to Mexico was to Oaxaca. The food there is wonderful. We have a few restaurants in Delaware that serve a reasonable facsimile of the food from that part of southern Mexico. Mexican food is so varied that I cannot come up with a yes or no view as to whether I like it. I do like the ways they use cilantro and chocolate, and the fresh papayas.
I don’t know anything about the others you mention, except that I associate Argentinian food with lots of beef which I do indeed love.
Come to think of it, there was a Cuban restaurant in Warszawa when I was there in the 1970’s. It was wonderful, but I cannot remember anything I had there except for salted, roasted almonds.
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