Gujjus want to travel so they can tell kantibhai and urmilaben back home about
it. And kantibhai etc if from an older generation are going to be horrified at
this waste of money - gujjus are, right after marwadis, the community that's
most stereotyped as 'kanjoos' / stingy / miserly or 'makkhichoos' (if a fly
falls into their soup they'll suck it clean rather than lose a single drop of
soup). (the jokes you'd find in circulation about them .. well, you could
substitute jews, Scotsmen etc and add the appropriate ethnic expressions and
they'd be familiar, tired and old anywhere in the world).
Only thing is - They don’t want anything other than gujju food when they travel.
Which is the mindset of a lot of Indians (or the stereotypical Americans in
Paris who make a beeline for McDonalds and bagels instead of trying croissants
and espresso).
srs
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Radhika, Y.
Sent: Wednesday, 3 June 2009 9:24 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [silk] Indian foodies
speaking of indian attitudes to experimenting with food, I am amazed at how
conservative 2nd generation desis are here in Canada. I know a couple of
Gujarati girls who deliberately chose a NRI group tour to Europe to avoid
having to eat meat or food cooked in dishes that ever contained meat!!! What
is the point of traveling if you don't want to experience with all senses?
On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 8:47 PM, Madhu Menon <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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
>
>
