A friend who has spent time in both Taiwan and mainland China tells me that the “Chinese” food served at yet average Chinese takeout place in the US is a toned-down, Westernized version of the real thing.
Is the same true of Indian places? Or is the chicken tandoori I get here in Springfield a close approximation of the Mumbai (or wherever) version?
Sent from my SGH-i677 using Board Express
I’ve spent 4 weeks in India and a year and half in England, our Indian food (at least in the Midwest) is a pathetic bland interpretation.
Though steaks suck in India, taste like Salsbury tv dinners, no wonder they don’t eat beef. 
We were just in India for three weeks last month and the one thing that surprised me was how, while the food did taste different, it wasn’t all that much different from the Indian food at the places I go to. Then again, when I have Indian in the US, it tends to be very specific styles, like Rajastani and Gujarati, because those are the Indian families I hang out with, and the restaurants we go to or have food catered by specialize in those styles.
One thing that did surprise me was that the food wasn’t as fiery as I was expecting it to be, either. I even ordered the street food in Mumbai that all the workers were eating for lunch, and it wasn’t particularly fiery. I mean, it had pep, but it wasn’t as hot as I was led to believe it was going to be.
Now, I’m sure everybody will tell me I’m crazy, but that was my actual experience. However, like I said, I don’t really have stuff like generic “chicken curry” in the US, although I’ve had “chicken makhani/butter chicken” and what I had in India as “chicken makhani” wasn’t far off what I get here in Chicago.
I went to an Indian buffet last week and one of the vegetarian dishes was essentially succotash. I wanted to tell the management “wrong kind of Indian!”
In Chicago, there are some really authentic and some not so. Buffets tend toward the “not so,” which is understandable. Just like the stuff you get at a Denny’s buffet isn’t as good as a restaurant that cooks everything to order and charges more.
After thinking about it, I should probably expound a little bit.
There are a few big differences. As I said above, where I was at (Mumbai, Gujarat, Rajastan, Delhi), I don’t recall running into anything that was just generic “curry.” Of the “generic Indian restaurant” dishes I did see, like murg makhani/korma/tikka (not tikka masala), the one that was the most different to me was the vindaloo. Vindaloo is traditionally made from pork, which I was aware of, but the version of vindaloo I was served was a good bit tangier and less spicy than what I’ve had here in the US and in the UK. It was also less heavily spiced. It didn’t have your typical Indian “curry” flavor and really felt more like a Portuguese dish with Indian influences, rather than the other way around.
Dishes like palak/saag paneer, methi mutter, roghan josh, aloo gobi, chana masala, didn’t taste all that different than what I can pick up on Devon St. (the Indian district) here in Chicago.
Also, at least in the areas I was at, naan was not heavily consumed at all, but chapatis/rotis or similar flatbreads were more typically ordered, and food was generally eaten with hands, using the rotis to scoop up the pieces. That said, at the restaurants I generally visit in Chicago, it’s similar.
Now, remember, India is a HUGE country, so to speak of “Indian food” and “Indian restaurants” in general is a bit problematic. I am speaking of my experiences and impressions, as an American, mostly in Gujarat and Rajasthan, and my familiarity with Indian food in America is in Chicago, where there is a big Indian community, and specifically with food from those regions where I travelled.
I think part of the problem with “Americanized” Chinese food vs Indian food is that somehow the “norm” for Chinese food is to get it to-go but for Indian food is to sit down and eat. If you go to a Chinese restaurant and sit for a meal, the quality of the food will no doubt jump a couple of stars just by merit of it not coming from a cardboard box. The dim sum and noodle houses are fairly authentic as is any place where you can order a whole peking duck. There are also a lot of Szechuan places that serve authentic food - especially if you specify to the server that you want authentic spiciness/flavoring.
[irrational preconceived notion] Also I feel like Chinese chefs are more ready to believe the racial bias of Whitey not being able to handle spicy food. Indian restaurants have a more, “take it or leave it” attitude regarding the flavor of their food. [/irrational preconceived notion]
One thing that I have noticed, as a South Indian and specifically Kannada, is that most Indian restaurants serve more Northern dishes . . . thinks like dosi, idli, vada which are practically staples among large swathes of Indians are relatively hard to find in US restaurants, and least IME.
You’ll find them here in Chicago (like here, for instance, among others) but you have to know where you are going. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether “generic Indian” in the US would be most Northern, Southern, or a combo of the two. I think you’re right that it skews north, but coconut-based dishes and stuff like vindaloo are common, which are Southern dishes, right?
You don’t get as much in the way in terms of the range of regional Indian cuisines served here. Especially because for some of these cuisines the strongest flavors may come from regional spices that are too expensive or hard to obtain. Kadipatta, kokum, watamba, triphal, turmeric leaf (not the powder) etc.-prob. not worth it to try to get your hands on as a restaurant.
But the food itself is not that “bad” here, or substantially different in flavor, especially if you’re going to a decent restaurant. It’s just likely to be Mughal cuisine.
We were trying to find an Indian restaurant in Flagstaff, but the address was wrong or it was gone – we ended up at a restaurant that called its food Himalayan, and that was quite a bit similar to the style of Indian food we’ve had.
The other day, I tried a new place and, per usual, ordered a sweet lassi – holy crap, it was frothy sugar, not tang at all. But, then, I think that place may have been run by white people.
Well you have to remember that in America, Salt and Pepper are sold in the spice aisle…
Authenticity is overrated.
Salt’s a mineral, and there’s no mineral isle to put it in. And pepper is absolutely a spice.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but it’s interesting to know how close the local (in this case, American) versions of the dishes are to the homeland versions. I personally like to have an idea of what the “authentic” version (so far as “authentic” can be defined) is to establish a baseline. When it comes to Asian food, I do tend to prefer the “authentic” interpretations versus the Westernized ones.
Is there a loud whooshing noise over your head? Because this post was pretty clueless.
Try getting Indian food in France. They do French food very well of course, but their efforts at world food are truly woeful. Even in quite nice restaurants ordering a curried dish basically means you’ll get curry powder mixed with cream as your sauce.
I didn’t get it, either, so help a brother out…
There’s another joke up around here that Scandinavians consider Milk to be a spice.
Americans aren’t used to spicy food, so everything tends to get blanded down to the lowest common denominator that will sell. In my lifetime we’ve gone from genuine spicy food being extremely rare to becoming widely available. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago that KFC changed their crispy strips because of complaints that they were too spicy.
I kind of had a feeling that was the joke, but I wasn’t entirely sure. It wasn’t really worded very well.
American cuisine tends to be a bit ham-handed with the spiciness. If a KFC item was too “spicy”, it means it would have had too much of an unpleasant bite to it, not surprising for them, really. Some Indian dishes may be brutally hot, but it does not typically sacrifice flavor for burn the way American food would tend to. And if it is too hot for you, make sure you have a bit of raita at hand to heal the burn. Or finish up with a nice bowl of lovely kheer.