On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]> wrote: > Charles Haynes [03/06/09 11:11 +1000]: >> >> So why is it virtually impossible to get pork dishes in Chinese >> restaurants in India? It would be like going to a country where none >> of the Italian restaurants served pasta!
> Well, that'd entirely shut out the muslim diners - and beef dishes would > drive out the hindu diners (not me, but ..). So you dont find a restaurant, > or even an airline that flies into indis, venturing beyond "chicken and > mutton", with the meat slaughtered to halal standards by default (hindus > dont mind eating halal meat, and muslims absolutely require it, so ..) Not all Muslims require halal, and that explanation while facile doesn't make sense to me. Muslims are less than 20% of the population no? Why isn't there at least one Chinese restaurant that will serve pork, given that it's such an important (even vital) part of Chinese cuisine? (Ok, Nanking served pork, but last I heard Baba Ling had been driven out of Bangalore - or maybe just threw up his hands in defeat and left. Quite a shame really, since Nanking was the only decent Chinese restaurant I found in Bangalore.) > And the local variant of mutton is goat meat, while mutton usually > translates to "meat from an adult sheep". Hey, I like goat. There's a Vietnamese place here in Sydney that specializes in goat. (See, why can't I say something like that about Bangalore? Isn't there SOME ethnic minority making their exotic native cuisine mostly for each other somewhere in Bangalore?) > To be fair you'll find a lot of cuisine that looks much closer to thai in > their use of spices (coconut milk, dried ginger etc) .. come to kerala and > try an alapuzha fish curry (say at the grand in cochin). They're even > capable of making you taste fresh ingredients (particularly spices and > pepper, though I dont expect anything less of a restaurant in cochin) even > in the "meat and vegetables in a generic brown gravy" cuisine. Shhh, don't tell the Bangaloreans but Debbie and I *love* Keralan cuisine. Fresh ingredients, liberal use of coconut milk, lots of fresh seafood. Yum yum yum. Of all the Indian regional cuisines we liked it best. Even better than Andhra, and I'm a serious chili head. -- Charles
