Chinatown...AKA a street with a few Chinese Restaurants

Seeing as I just got back from Darjeeling this weekend (it is in the foothills of the Himalayas), I thought it would be nice to update everyone about what has been going on. Last week along with going to Dakshineswar Temple, Erik and I accompanied Rachel (my roommate) to one of her site visit areas, Tangra. Tangra, or Chinatown as most people would call it, is not what you would expect Chinatown to be. Having recently been to Chinatown in Chicago this summer with my dad, I pictured Tangra to be bustling with Chinese people, restaurants dotting every corner, and thousands of Chinese trinkets for sale...boy was I wrong! Chinatown was merely a rundown street that had a Chinese restaurant every couple hundred yards. There were no trinkets for sale and most people in the surrounding area looked Indian. We decided to go to a restaurant that had been recommended to us called Kim Ling's. When walking into the restaurant I noticed that the waiters were all Indian (Senssue if you are reading this, it gave me a little chuckle to see them standing there because I know that you would have doubted the authenticity of the food as soon as you saw the wait staff).

Well...the food was good :)

We sat down and ordered sweet and sour chicken and garlic chili chicken for lunch. Lunch was surprisingly delicious and it was some of the first Chinese food I have had since arriving in Kolkata. Chinese food is different than we are used to in the States. I have noticed that when you order chowmein here it is actually what we would consider lomein to be in the States. Nonetheless, the food was eaten up in a jiffy and we left seeing as that was the only part of Chinatown worth seeing. I was a little disappointed with Kolkata's Chinatown (seeing as this is the closest I have ever been to China) but we did get a fantastic lunch out of the visit!