04.11.2026
Once, on a long trip in Abu Dhabhi, we were being taken out to the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in possibly the whole world for days and days and days. After a while though, I asked my mother to make me something at home. I was tired of eating food by other people. It was a simple and inexpensive dish. Lentil curry with chapattis and a salad. But it tasted so much better than everything else that I was eating. My mother’s food is the best food in the entire world. Because it has my mother’s love in it.
Yet when you read the newspapers, you never get anyone talking about the restaurant of mum. They are perfectly willing to describe and review the food in all of the posh restaurants that they are going into. Do I want to be like them? To treat everything outside the house as worthy of importance and that which is within beneath consideration? To treat the best as the worst and not mention it? No. Because I became a writer for my mother and for my grandfather and for my community. So I will write about the restaurant of mum.
Today for dinner, my mother made chicken curry on the bone with a freshly cut salad and fresh home made chapattis. Everything was made from scratch. It was an authentic Punjabi dish that was so delicious that I scraped every single drop of the curry from the bowl in which the meat was served.
The chicken was succulent and flavourful. There was a mix of thigh pieces and breast meat because I don’t like eating drumsticks. This was the personalisation in the dish. Aside from that, my mother hadn’t put too much chilli in because I am being wary of it as I was advised to do so following a persistent cough by both my girlfriend and my doctor.
The curry that the meat was in was sensational. It was a firm paste created through the blending of tomatos, garlic and onions with garam masala that my mother had ground together herself. It is the bones in the chicken that give it the awesome rich flavour. That’s the authentic way to make it. It was absolutely perfect.
The chapattis were fresh and crispy, hot off the grill. And the salad was fresh: raw onions which I particularly enjoy with my curries to accentuate the flavour, crisp lettuce, cool cucumbers, tangy tomatoes, savoury radishes and spinach leaves which my mother gives me for strength and health. All washed down with some filtered water.
An amazing meal. And the great thing about it is that this is a dish that my mother cooked for everyone all day. A lot of love went into it. The great thing about it is that this is a dish that has been passed down generations of Punjabi women. It is the passing down of love through generations. The great thing about it is that I get this dish regularly and I look forward to it every time. Because a lot of love went into it.
If you are Punjabi and your mother cooks for you, you eat like a king. This is the restaurant of mum. It is the best restaurant in the whole world.
