Pakola...

Hey, went to a relatively new Indian grocer here in the Portland area and grabbed the cola pictured below. I like to try drinks and sweets from other cultures. It was fantastic. It's marketed as an "ice cream soda". It tastes like a combination of cream soda with rose water and Indian spices. Anyone else tried Indian sodas with such flavorings?

Check out this thread. Read down a little bit to find out about Limca, and other Indian sodas.

I suppose the makers might quibble with you calling them Indian spices.

As the thread Steve linked shows, I was less able to like Pakola, though my description, apart from the final judgment, isn't that different from yours.

For medicinal, overly-flavored tropical soda pop, I'll stick to the Caribbean ans S American stuff, such as Iron Beer, Materva, the Guarana drinks of Brazil, Jamaican ginger beers, etc. I don't really even like most of the Mexican stuff, Jarritos tamarindo and Mexican Squirt excepted, because they are almost uniformly cloying and flat (flavor wise, not carbonation).

JeffB,

What do you think of Sidral Mundet, a Mexican Apple Soda? I've been off Coke since Ash Wednesday, which allows me to consider other drinks than my standard. I have to come to really like it.

I'm not a huge fan of apple cider in any form, though I know that Sidral is a little less sweet. It's interesting that two of the more popular drinks in Mexico, Sidral and the Sangria pop, nod back to Spain.