Food heaven in Amritsar

We may have just found food heaven in India. While we have been eating well the entire time we've been here (as my increasingly tight jeans would suggest) things just went up a notch in Amritsar. Two days ago we flew out of Udaipur, spent a night in Delhi and then boarded another early morning train for Amritsar. Amritsar is located in the Punjab province, which is markedly different from Rajasthan in many ways. First of all, the majority of people are Sikh. This means there are significantly less cows, the holy animals in Hindu, wandering the road. This in turn means less cow poo to be concerned about! In fact, all this considering, the roads are fairly well maintained! Yesterday we went wandering down a street that was supposed to have a market. This market however almost resembled a "normal" street of shops. There is certainly more money in this province. Anyway, back to the food. We arrived later than we expected. The train went slow due to heavy winter fog. We got settled into our hotel which was right across the street from the train station and then went for our wander. Amritsar is famous for its snack food so we wanted to find us some of those treats! We ended up in a little cafe down a side alley. We were greeted by the usual group of men who jump to attention when they know you are choosing their restaurant. An old man (obviously the one in charge) barks some orders at them, and before we know it we are seated with water and menues. Then everyone watches as we choose our food. We chose kebabs and a special Sikh paneer curry. It wasn't the snack food we were wanting but it did not disappoint. We wandered back to the hotel, where the restaurant serves draft beer (also a first in India). We did some internet while enjoying a pitcher of beer and my new favourite snack peanut masala. Peanut masala is made of roasted spiced peanuts, chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, sald and pepper and coriander. With beer it is delicious. And then it is dinner time! We had already researched a few places we wanted to go check out. On our last two trips we have used Trip Advisor quite a bit, an online social network for travellers. It is a great place to check out for most up to date reviews. With a restaurant in mind we got in a rickshaw and went our way. Unfortunately we were unable to find the place we wanted to go to. We walked up and down the street, asked several people, some of them gave us directions. None of the directions seemed to coorespond. So we eventually ended up at another restaurant that was on our list, and this did not disappoint either. We enjoyed a beautiful dish of tandoori chicken, a fried fish and a chicken curry. It was so delicious. I could happily eat there for the rest of our stay in India. The tandoori chicken was unlike anything we had eaten before. We found out on our Indian cooking course the orange colour of tandoori chicken is a colouring added to give the appearance of spice. We were pleased to see this tandoori chicken did not have the fake orange colour. It was cooked beautifully, with the crispy bits in all the right places. The seasoning was to die for. It tasted of honed in perfection, worked on through several generations. Feeling quite euphoric over our meal, we got ourselves another rickshaw back to the hotel and flopped into bed, sleeping almost 10 hours. What was in our food?? Today we go see the Indian/Pakistan border ceremony, and then the ceremony at the Golden Temple. Followed by more food adventures I'm sure.