On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Sriram Karra<[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 9:04 AM, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]>wrote: [...]
> You are ignoring the great Hotel Saravana Bhavan. The rate at which their > serving sizes are diminishing is only surpassed by the rate at which their > charges are shooting up... I remember the time that Saravana Bhavan created a revolution of sorts by serving 4 types of chutney as standard accompaniment to dishes - this when you had to persuade most places to part with the "ghetti" (thick) chutney. Not true then that they don't know the power of plenty. Sure, there's always the pressure to keep the bottom line healthy, but I know that most Indian families would switch in a heartbeat to a restaurant that serves larger, tastier portions, and they have - so SB is aware of this too. Compare a standard serving size from the 80s with today's restaurant menus and you will find the change has been quite large. There wasn't a super sized dosai or channa batura 30 years ago - it was in the 90s that most restaurants started offering these servings almost simultaneously. Today you can order a dosai that's 5 metres long in most large restaurants including SB. Grand Sweets [1] was popular because they made everything in the thickest of ghee of butter (an unintended side effect of Operation flood) - and made super sized murukku and adhirsam. Sure it was expensive, but everyone had more money now didn't they? There's also softer food made possible by high heat restaurant gas stoves and electric grinders and mixers. Remember the soft "malli poo" (jasmine) idlies of Saravana Bhavan, or the super crisp dosais? Softer food is tastier and easier to eat - but not very healthy. The calories you would consume digesting the food are now NOT being used up, worse still the soft food is absorbed far more rapidly by the body, and you feel like you have room for more food much sooner than if you had hard food. Cheeni [1] Apologies to the non-Madras folk on the list, this thread is now lost in Madras analogies
