Indian Buffet

The quirky taste of Indian restaurants in the US

1. There will always be a knife and a fork, but never a spoon.
How do the others get by without a spoon? It is hilarious to watch some Indian nut struggle with simply a knife and a fork.

2. Despite knowing that you are Indian, the waiters will always talk in English or worse, with an American accent.
You have to persist in the native tongue for quite some time before the waiter agrees to drop talking in English in his thinly-disguised North or South Indian accent.

3. All finger food, but never any finger-bowls.
It can be argued that if you get by the limited cutlery in 1., you will never get to this point. If you do manage to wield the knife and fork, thanks to the sheer effort involved, you will end up hungrier at the end of the meal than before. Indian food should be eaten with your fingers because it always tastes better that way.

Any more?

5 comments:

hirak said...

Checking if the new template works!

Sumedha said...

Nice...but I'm not sure if I preferred the older one!

Wavefunction said...

Maybe you can throw Gurcharan Das's Inglish at the waiters and watch them get floored ;)
I remember an occasion when I happened to visit Vaishali with three staid physics professors, one of them the chairman. While all were making attempts of reasonable success in eating with knife and fork, I finally threw the instruments to the table and dug in with my fingers. The chairman, delighted that somebody finally had the social indelicacy to do it, did the same, followed by everyone else! I follow the same custom in the US in eating Indian (or anything else that lends itself most easily to hand-picking), no matter if it draws daggers from my 'cultured' American 'friends'.

About the template, I think the writing in the first one was much more clear and distinct, and darker, not to mention bigger.
I am sure you know that enetation on your blog is perpetually disabled, don't you?

hirak said...

There is currently no definitive book on 'Indian Eating Etiquette' and if there is one it has to mention in bold letters -
YOU MUST EAT INDIAN FOOD WITH YOUR FINGERS.
**
Shall increase the font size. It seems rather small. Currenly, the advisor is away on a conference. Till he comes back I can play around! :)

Nikhil said...

They should take a leaf out of HSBC’s book. Go local. But, the hypocrisy of Indians is unparalleled. There was an expose in the Deccan Herald where they revealed that Indian tour operators fuss over the ’foreigners’ while giving even the rich Indian a cold-shoulder. The gori-chamdis are ipso facto superior to desis. Similarly, the Indian vernaculars are assumed to be sub-par to converse in. Disgraceful.