I wish this place were called ‘Angles in my Kitchen’, or ‘Angels in my Emissions’. As it is, I can barely stomach writing about anything that purports to involve angels. If there truly are angels in this café’s kitchen, I hope they are at least sanitary, vegetarian, and somewhat interested in good coffee. I don’t want to end up with another intestinal parasite just because some seraphim forgot to wash his hands after using the toilet. And, frankly, I find the thought of any angel implicating himself in the preparation and consumption of animal flesh abhorrent—certainly one of the many reasons I find the Judeo-Christian tradition so unsavory (see: Abraham and his dubious sacrifice of the innocent ram in place of his son Isaac, Genesis 11:22).

A confession: the above prefatory comments are a means to divert you, the reader, from the fact that the café in question is unequivocally a restaurant, a patisserie, and/or a bakery. Whatever the case, it is not a coffee house. Nevertheless, I shall pull the ‘creative license’ literary trump card and treat it as if it were—or should be—one.

‘Angels in my Kitchen’ is your typical Delhi café. It boasts an extensive menu that neither inspires one to wonder at the skill of the chefs, nor to speculate upon the amount of preparation given to the multitude of dishes on tap. Rather, when confronted with such gastronomic tomes—a common feature of ‘Western’-style establishments in India—I am left to ponder at the quality that slips through the cracks when café-a-teurs insist upon being such dilettantes. Need any one eatery offer breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and electrolyte sachets? Certainly, this is not a feature restricted exclusively to South Asian establishments—see thos. more’s kaffa crossing tableau, for an example of a similarly confused ‘café’ in our own West Philadelphia, PA—but being a resident currently in Delhi, I am forced to face this particular situation squarely, in the face, on a daily basis. I can only imagine that ‘Angels in my Kitchen’ would improve infinitely if it were to transform itself into a nice little coffee house. I say this not out of some misguided self-interest (ok, yes, it would lend legitimacy to this at-the-moment questionable ‘café’ tableau), but rather because I believe Delhi’s brand-conscious, rising middle class could really use a kick in the pants, and I am positive a home-grown, independent, fair-trade-conscious coffee house is just the venue for the job.

I also propose that ‘Angels in my Kitchen’ nix the Journey and the Billy Joel, both of which were heard during this morning’s visit to said establishment. I can appreciate some mid-thirties lawyer from Minneapolis digging on such bad 80’s tunes, but the notion that this music carries an audience here only conjures notions of some bizarrely misplaced, schizophrenic nostalgia for the conspicuous consumption of the Reagan years. In India, mind you.

There are some things we are unable to transcend, but by recognizing our own agency—the potency of subjective experience—we may be able to locate some breach in the strictures of habitus that bind and structure us. I would like to think I succeeded in doing just that, whilst sipping an adequately pulled cup of espresso today at ‘Angels in my Kitchen’. I had allowed my mind to wander, to meditate upon the view onto the multi-storey Pizza Hut across the way, when I spotted a cat plying his way from rooftop to rooftop. As this is in fact the first cat I have seen in Delhi—and I have been here for two months—I am positive this sign augurs well for our little market. Perhaps next year, when I return to Delhi, I will find that things have changed for the better. In ‘Angels’ place, I will find a new establishment—a coffeehouse, perhaps, called ‘Cats in my Kitchen’. Or, better yet, ‘Angels’ will have become entirely overrun by cats, its large market-facing windows filled with lounging calicos, harlequins, and tabbies.

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poured in: Delhi, India

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