![]() ![]() In 2006, then-Senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden came under fire for saying, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.” For immigrant families like my own, you best believe, we’ve known.Ī wall inside Antelope Truck Stop and Pronghorn Restaurant on I-80 near Burns, Wyoming Natalie Behring For decades, gas stations have been serving up Korean tteokbokki, and Tibeten sha phaley, and Punjabi tandoori chicken, in the places and spaces most people wouldn’t think to look twice. And if it’s not a Taste of India, you’ll find a Momo Spot inside a Texaco in Irving, Texas, or a Haeorum Foods Korean BBQ sandwiched between a dry cleaner and a pet groomer in an Ocala, Florida, Sunoco gas station food mart. As an immigrant kid growing up in suburban America, my childhood was filled with nondescript Indian restaurants off the interstate, with a full buffet lunch right up against a 7-Eleven. More often than not, they’re owned by immigrants selling Styrofoam bowls of hot sarson ka saag and shami kebabs - the kinds of comfort foods they wish they could find outside their own homes. If you really start looking, you’ll find thousands of restaurants in gas stations and truck stops tucked away in every state and city. But my father’s specific Taste of India that I sought out to find - my “Rosebud,” my riddle of the Sphinx - remained a mystery. There are dozens of Yelp reviews of customers saying they didn’t realize their lunch would be served in the back of a Chevron, and TripAdvisor comments imploring future customers not to be dissuaded by the fact that they would be eating food made in the same place they would be fueling up their tank. There is a Taste of India restaurant in a truck stop in Marshall, Texas there’s another in a gas station in San Jon, New Mexico there’s yet another in Clinton, Mississippi and a My Taste of India in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. If you Google “Taste of India gas station restaurant,” you’ll be met with millions of results. ![]() It’s apparently located in the back of a gas station, and if you’d like to embark on an arguably impossible Carmen Sandiego-style chase, look no further. My mother claims that my father’s current favorite restaurant is called Taste of India, somewhere in the vague vicinity of the San Francisco Bay Area.
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