It took over a year and more than a few trips to different Indian supermarkets, but I’ve finally (and inadvertently) found the answer to the Ching’s Secret Mystery. My original guess, that this was all some kind of reference to a Bollywood character that I was simply not grasping, ended up being not too far off. In fact, Steampunk Hat Man and the man seen below are variations on the same persona - Ranveer Ching - an invented spokesman (played, appropriately, by Bollywood star Ranveer Singh), who’s anchored a series of gigantic, cinematic commercials chronicling his gymnastic proclivity for Instant Indo-Chinese fusion. Ching’s latest outing (helmed by acclaimed director Rohit Shetty, and reputedly the most expensive advertisement in Indian history) finds him parading around a post-apocalyptic landscape as a Mad Max-esque hero, in such elaborate form that my Indian friend had assumed, from passing familiarity with the commercial, that it was a clip from a full-fledged movie. Look below for the blockbuster advertisement, as well as its predecessor, in which we’re finally able to glimpse the equally ridiculous hair-do hiding beneath that asinine hat.
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Every so often I encounter an ostensibly edible object which makes no immediate sense, fits into no previous classificatory bracket, and provides few visual hints as to its identity. On truly rare occasions, eating said object only makes things worse. Enter Senjed, a small dried fruit which, despite its wrinkled external texture, gives way to a shockingly fluffy interior; the closest comparison I can make is to some kind of prank jellybean filled with old-fashioned couch stuffing. The package, whose label I made a point only to read after attempting to figure out what was going on first on my own, describes a “taste and texture somewhere between dates and candy floss.” This, to me, seems a bit charitable. The highly informative bag, obtained from the venerable Manhattan Spice Temple Kalustyan’s, also offers a few different names for the item (Lotus Fruit, Silver Berry, Russian Olive, Oleaster Fruit), which helps to confirm that it is indeed a fruit, not some oddball candy hiding out in inside of one’s skin.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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