Charles Haynes wrote:
terms, rejecting bits that are "too foreign." Indians are not alone in this of course - westerner diners do it all the time, the difference being that you *can* find "authentic" ethnic restaurants in most large american, european, and australian cities, not just the westernized versions.
Why can't you find all that? Mostly business reasons. The cost of setting up a proper restaurant with a bar is very high in Bangalore - somewhere in the 10 to 15 million range for a fine dining place. Just getting a liquor licence is about 4.5 million now. Combine that with the unadventurous nature of most Indians, and a prospective restaurant owner realises he'd do much better if he just served up the same ol', same ol' with some small twist instead of risking his neck serving a cuisine for which people would visit only on weekends. The exception is incredibly expensive food in a five-star hotel, perhaps, like Blue Ginger, where the average per-head is about Rs. 3500 in peak season (heard this from the General Manager himself a couple of years ago.)
There is also the significant difficulty in procuring staff to man the kitchen in an exotic restaurant. How likely is it to find an expert in Brazillian food in India? And then they need to teach the Nepali boys - it's almost always Nepali boys in the kitchen - how to make it right. (Mostly people without any formal culinary training. That's another issue in Indian restaurants outside hotels.)
Cheeni has, earlier in the thread, summed up the main reasons that Indians are not willing to try new things. (Gautam and I have had several discussions about this, most of which involved me bitching about customers asking for things like "kababs and biryani", "pad thai made with mustard oil", "curd rice" at my place.) I think it would be fair to say that only in the last 5-6 years or so have people started taking regular holidays abroad, trying new food, and becoming potential customers of different cuisines. It will probably take another 15-20 years (half a generation) for the culinary landscape to change enough to see the kind of variety you are expecting. I'm surprised Cheeni included "Chinese", however, since the Indo-Chinese cuisine is pretty much a cuisine of its own. There is absolutely no hope for a mainstream mid-range Chinese restaurant here. The image of Chinese food has been irretrievably warped in the minds of the Indian people over the last two decades. There is no saving it. Case in point: Nanking.
Indians grow up eating food (generalisation alert!) that is spicy and sometimes, as Suresh said, has the natural flavour of the ingredient buried in the gravy or masala. When that's all your tastebuds are used to, it takes a bit of retraining to start detecting and appreciating more subtle flavours. Someone like my mother for instance, defines "good food" as anything with lots of chilli in it. She believes that everything should have "spice and tang" (loose translation from Malayalam.) There is no way I can make her appreciate Italian food, for instance. In all fairness, it takes a fair bit to get the Western palate used to really spicy food too.
As for why pork is not typically seen in Chinese restaurants here, again the answer is that they want to appeal to the widest possible base. Most Muslims are non-vegetarians, and many will not even go to restaurants that serve pork. I think some 40% of the Indian population is vegetarian (anyone have reliable stats on this?) and even in the non-vegetarian lot, many won't eat beef and pork. Indians are stuck up on that plain-jane thing known as chicken; almost everyone is OK with that, so that's what you'll find most of. And "lamb" of course. (Ironic because lamb consumption in China is very low.) You'll of course find the token one or two pork dishes on a coffee shop menu in a five-star hotel, but they have to keep something for their foreign guests. The mid-range restaurant owner decides it's better to play it safe and not keep anything that might piss off potential customers.
Regards, Madhu -- <<< * >>> Madhu Menon Shiok Far-eastern Cuisine | Moss Cocktail Lounge 96, Amar Jyoti Layout, Inner Ring Road, Bangalore @ http://shiokfood.com & http://mosslounge.com Join the Moss group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39295417270
