Indianness X - Restaurants....

The article in "The Hindu" about our very own President Dr. Kalam recommending the good old vadai to Icelanders made me finally write this long-pending article now. Let me not make this to be an extensive coverage of vadai. That article has done great justice to this South Indian delicacy. One point, however, merits mention. In one of the Indian restaurants in the US, it was advertised as "The Indian Do-nut". What a way to attract attention of the ignorant ones? When I am at it, the Onion Uttapam was described as "The Indian Pizza - with onion topping" and the Sambhar as "Lentil Soup".

The restaurants in the US do their best to project the Indianness, that is sadly not available anywhere else in the world but India. Believe me, restaurants do hold a special place in an Indian's heart. Sadly, people of our grandmother's generation are strictly anti-restaurants. Most restaurants/mami's place/iyer's lunch home/udupi high class vegetarian hotels/ whatever, use the indispensable onion for almost every preparation. This fact doesn't really appeal to the orthodox class of the society. Having a coffee there is also taboo. I happen to know of people who have gone to restaurants on the stealth, just to avoid the wrath of these people.

The face-lift that the restaurants have undergone is shocking. No longer is it the simple place to have that Sambhar-Vada or Masala Dosa and a cup of coffee. The quality of food has deteriorated with the people giving more preference to the ambience, location and the seemingly vulgar catering to the high-class. Nowadays, the food being catered to the high-class is no longer high-class. This is not to say that all restaurants are like that. There are some that continue to survive these necessary yet difficult times of westernization and modernization, courtesy their USP - Indianness.

What is the appeal of these places catering to the high-class? Is it because people have lots of money to splurge on something as banal as dining out. People end up spending around 20 times what they would have in a normal restaurant. During my trip to India this Dec-Jan, I was surprised to find people giving preference to Subway (where they dole out their health conscious low calorie salad based subs), MacDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc. over the best restaurants catering to the middle-class with high-class food.

Another incident to mention. I had been to a "rustic" high-class udupi hotel in Triplicane, Madras with my father during my trip. That place was supposed to have been established pre-independence and its main USP was and continues to be Sambhar Idli and Onion Rava. People (all normal sane ones, poor and the rich alike) thronged to this place to have that white, soft, puffed rice pancakes dipped in lentil soup made with small onions.

Rusticity Rules!!!