John Tangney

South Indian cuisine is quite different from the food served at the gazillion Northern Indian restaurants in the Bay Area. Dosas, uthapams, rassam, idli and sambar, …

Udupi is a chain, though you wouldn’t know it. The food is good, all vegetarian, and in the low to medium-priced range. Formica tables (well, maybe not literally – I don’t recall, but in spirit.) Very informal.

They recently got a new chef. The tastes are a little more complex and slightly more refined. Spicey? Always middling, though of course that depends on your palate/tolerance. I have never got anything seriously hot.

Recommended.

I was concerned about two 11-hours flights to get there, with two young kids. But it turned out OK. We spent the night in Amsterdam on the way, which broke up the journey rather nicely. We made sure we were well stocked up with ripped DVDs on my iBook and, with a splitter and two pairs of noise-cancelling headphones, the Little Darlings watched movies in tandem. Pretty good.

My trip was for business and to catch up with family. I gave a lecture on Extreme Programming at the University of the Western Cape, did some high powered wheeling and dealing with one brother, and roped my younger brother in to help me out with some international contracts.

For the kids, the highpoint was a raid by a troup of monkeys which invaded our chalet, stole our food and shat on the floor.

Game watching in Pilansberg was great. Wandering around Cape Town (which I am not familiar with, being from Johannesburg) was a cultural novelty.

Overall, the thing that struck me most forcefully was the immense change – growth – in society over the last 10 years. The new generation has never known apartheid, and it shows. What a great atmosphere!