Last weekend my partner and I went to Cafe Athyeka 2.0 in Noida. It was our first dinner date after the birth of our daughter. It was fun. Anyone reading this should try their Chettinad mushroom curry with parotta. Though I love anything with parotta so perhaps do not take my word for it. My partner loved it too- and she knows her food- so may be try it.

As the Chettinad mushroom curry arrived, we discussed our first encounter with mushroom. That opened a door I had not walked through in a long time.

I first encountered mushroom at the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal in 2011. I was a student and had never seen mushroom curry before- or if I had, I have no memory of it. But I had certainly never tasted it. One evening in the college mess I saw mushroom curry. When I looked at it closely it did not look vegetarian to me. It looked like something that had no business being on the veg side of anything.

I asked the bhaiya behind the counter.

He said it was vegetarian.

I was not convinced but I ate it anyway. It tasted different. Not bad. Just different. I turned to my friend Panda sitting next to me and asked him directly- is this vegetarian? He said yes. I trusted him (I should never have, as he and another Odiya batchmate taught me an Odiya abuse that turned out to be the complete opposite of what they claimed.) I ate the rest of it and loved it.

I went back to my hostel room that night, opened the internet and read about mushroom.

What I learned and remember now was that mushrooms are not plants. They are fungi. I stared at the screen for a long time. Then I searched for images. The first thing I saw looked like what we used to call saanp ka chatta back in Kanpur. The strange things that appeared near the walls of our house during the rainy season, usually in the damp corner near the gate.

I had just eaten saanp ka chatta.

I sat with this information for a while. Then I read further. High nutritional value. Rich in protein. Good for immunity. Blah blah blah.

I kept reading until I had assembled enough evidence to convince myself that what I had eaten was not only acceptable but genuinely good for me.

The fact that I had loved the curry helped.

I have eaten mushroom happily ever since. Fifteen years and counting. Last weekend, a bowl of Chettinad mushroom curry arrived and reminded me of all of this. When I told my partner this story she laughed. We finished the parotta. It was a good evening- simple and perfect.