Twitter’s talking about Indian food, and let me say that the first Indian meal I ever had in my life was when I came to London as a teenager and my family went to a restaurant on the Strand. My dad didn’t know what to order and asked the waiter simply to ‘bring us a good meal’. >

>I had no idea what to expect and the very first mouthful was like a lightning bolt from heaven, I’d never tasted anything so good in my life. I loved coconut and cinnamon and cardamom, but I’d never had them in anything savoury before. It was an amazing, memorable moment.

I think my head exploded. The waiter brought us so much food, it must’ve cost a bomb. We polished those plates to an absolute shine. We went back to Seattle and talked about it for years.

We finally got an Indian restaurant in our suburb in the early ‘90s (called Rajah), it was pretty expensive. My little sister got asked by a boy to a school evening event and I didn’t get asked. My dad pitied me and asked it I’d like to try out Rajah with him. I was like HELL YES

Dad and I dressed up pretty fancy and dined out and I BY FAR had the best evening.

Fairly soon after, Seattle turned into tech central; now you can find Indian food everywhere. But it’s fun to recall when it was this strange and wonderful, saved-for-special-occasions delight.