Pizza Hut

There is a Pizza Hut in Ernakulam, the big city that’s an hour’s bus ride from Aluva. I’ve known about it since November and figured out just where it was last month. Now, I’ve finally gone and tried it.

I happen to think that eating at American restaurants in other countries is a great cultural experience. Although living on rice does arouse in us cravings for a good slice of greasy pizza, our trip to Pizza Hut was less about fulfilling our desire for the food than simply experiencing it in a different setting and then making our judgments.

Fortunately, our judgments were good ones.

The Pizza Hut in Ernakulam was probably the cleanest and best-kept Pizza Hut I have ever been to. I might even go as far as to say that this Pizza Hut was beautiful inside. The tables and chairs looked brand new, and the bright sun coming through the big windows made the place shine. India is not a culture obsessed with cleanliness, so I was really impressed. Even the bathrooms were nice (and that is a rare occurrence here).

The menu was slightly different, and a majority of the items had the little chili next to them, indicating a “hot” dish. That’s India for ya! Pepperoni was a choice, but it had been temporarily discontinued due to some problems with importing it. Most of the meat pizzas had chicken on them. I ended up ordering the “Chicken Hawaiian” pizza, thinking that, even if the chicken turned out bad, you can’t go wrong with pineapple here.

But the chicken didn’t turn out bad at all. In fact, the pizza tasted just as I expected it to (and not because I expected it to be bad or different!). It was actually very similar to what it would taste like in the U.S. The sauce was the same, the crust and the cheese were both just right, and the toppings were fresh and yummy. I enjoyed every last slice of that pizza.

But even more than the pizza, I enjoyed the Diet Pepsi that I drank with it. Coke and Pepsi are both easily available here, but I have never seen diet anything, until now. It was ice-cold (although I did not take ice), and it tasted like heaven.

And I hope it’s not blasphemous to say so, but the whole time I was in Pizza Hut, I may just have been in heaven!