Most of the Indian families I know, the women don’t work outside the home. They stay home and cook, clean, and raise the children.
Probably because most of these are family businesses and in some cultures people may get uncomfortable with their wives and daughters parading around strangers all day- or they consider themselves lucky that the women in their family do not have to work outside the home.
Well in Chinese take-aways there are women working behind the counter so why not in restauarants.
What?
Your experience is extremely unusual, unless you thought he meant feathers, not dots. 58% of Indian immigrants to the US hold bachelor’s degrees or higher (compared to ~25% of the US population as a whole), and the figure is roughly equal among men and women.
Just to clarify, I didn’t mean feathers 
Indian restaurants themselves are extremely rare in most of the US, so I doubt most of us will be able to tell you, unfortunately. I’ve only had the pleasure of eating at an Indian restaurant once, and I don’t remember anything about the waitstaff.
Extremely rare? Are you sure about that? There are probably 15-20 in Northern Virginia alone…
There are that many Indian restaurants in many small English towns. I’m not kidding when I say that South Asian restaurants are more common in Britain than any other type of eating establishment, including fast food joints, pubs, and even chip shops (fish and chip takeout places).
Yeah, I was wondering about that myself. I know California isn’t exactly representative of the US as a whole, but they’re pretty common around here. There are at least three within a fifteen minute drive from my house, and that’s just counting the suburbs and small towns, not San Francisco proper. Sure, it’s nothing compared to the density you find in the UK, but I wouldn’t call that “extremely rare.”
Of course there are. There’s a huge Indian immigrant community in the DC area. That’s not the case in most of the US. Conversely, I’ve lived in San Diego for about ten years and I’ve only ever seen or heard of one Indian restaurant, and it’s been closed for at least a year now.
I guess the Bay Area is all of California now. If that’s the case, then yes, I’ll take your word for it that Indian restaurants are common in “California”.
A quick glance on Yelp confirms that there are more Indian restaurants in San Diego than I thought, but most of them are of the fast-food or buffet variety, and probably don’t have waiters at all. I would be surprised if there were more than two or three actual sit-down Indian restaurants in San Diego, a city of almost two million people. You can find that many Chinese restaurants, pizza places, retro diners or delis in a couple of blocks in Hillcrest.
That said, “extremely rare” was probably a pretty big overstatement. Mea culpa.
ETA: By way of explanation, I’ve never heard much buzz about Indian restaurants and I can’t remember hearing anyone talk about going to one in the last few years. I can certainly believe that it’s a different story in the DC area, where there’s a much higher density of Indian immigrants, or San Francisco, where there’s a much higher density of foodies.
It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t make it true.
Oh, ye of little [del]faith[/del] deliciousness.
Which is still about one tenth the number of South Asian restaurants you’d find in a similarly-sized British city. “Extremely rare” is admittedly a bit misleading; I mean, there are probably more Indian restaurants in most US cities than there are in, say, Copenhagen.*
*For all I know, Copenhagen may be a hotbed of Indian food consumption
Are you implying that you don’t think that in the US, it is generally expected that one will tip?
-FrL-
There’s a waitress-cum-bouncer in the Indian we go to in Wigan after a night out. She’s white though and probably eats men as a snack.
I think he’s implying that withholding a tip is an acceptable response to poor service.
Just telling you my experience with the families I have known. These are Muslim Indians, by the way, not Hindu, and from the region near Pakistan, and living in Northern VA. One woman I used to drive to the mall when her husband was at work, and she always made me promise not to tell him, because he didn’t let her go out without him without permission.
Also, responding to later posts in the thread, I have never found Indian restaurants to be particularly rare in any of the places I’ve lived (Tucson, NoVa, Atlanta, Cleveland). Which is good, because I luuuuuuurve Indian food.
Ridley, any chance you can get the phone number of this “cum bouncer” who “eats men as a snack” for me? She sounds fun!
That makes more sense; Multani or Punjabi families are much more conservative whether Hindu or Muslim. That said, it would be unusual to see a family of that sort emigrate in the first place.
Well, it’s the only part that counts, at any rate.
But taking a page from RNATB:
Indian restaurants in Sacramento.
Indian restuarants in Bakersfield.
Indian restaurants in San Diego.
I’d say that you can find Indian cuisine within a reasonable distance just about anywhere in California.
:eek: :eek:
I’ve never seen it bounce.