It’s been a perpetual source of surprise to me that curry houses are so ‘non-specific’. Pakistan and India together make about 1.7 billion people, about a third of the planet’s population, and I’d have thought an easy way to distinguish a restaurant would be to offer something more region-specific, but it’s fairly rare.
Here in the UK, the majority of curry houses are Bangladeshi - used to be the vast majority, now it’s more like 2/3rds. We’ve a couple of ‘more specific’ chains - both Bundobust and Dishoom do Mumbai-style, and they’re both fantastic - and there’s a few places that do well with the ‘naturally vegan’ cuisines, but mostly you can go in to a restaurant and expect the usual suspects will be on the menu.
Same goes for Chinese restaurants - I don’t believe that a billion people all eat the same food, it’s too big a place for the same ingredients to be in season all the time. Why are they not more specific, more often?
It’s the stigma actually since 9/11 or the fear from it that can negatively affect their businesses including vandalism if not less attraction to their places.
The best Indian food I had was at a place in St Petersburg Florida on the first floor of an otherwise empty office building. We could smell the curry from the parking lot while still inside the car
Indian food restaurants have been a blessing in this although there are many Pakistani-Muslim owners posing as Indian ones in US.
It’s been a perpetual source of surprise to me that curry houses are so ‘non-specific’. Pakistan and India together make about 1.7 billion people, about a third of the planet’s population, and I’d have thought an easy way to distinguish a restaurant would be to offer something more region-specific, but it’s fairly rare.
Here in the UK, the majority of curry houses are Bangladeshi - used to be the vast majority, now it’s more like 2/3rds. We’ve a couple of ‘more specific’ chains - both Bundobust and Dishoom do Mumbai-style, and they’re both fantastic - and there’s a few places that do well with the ‘naturally vegan’ cuisines, but mostly you can go in to a restaurant and expect the usual suspects will be on the menu.
Same goes for Chinese restaurants - I don’t believe that a billion people all eat the same food, it’s too big a place for the same ingredients to be in season all the time. Why are they not more specific, more often?
It’s the stigma actually since 9/11 or the fear from it that can negatively affect their businesses including vandalism if not less attraction to their places.
The best Indian food I had was at a place in St Petersburg Florida on the first floor of an otherwise empty office building. We could smell the curry from the parking lot while still inside the car
… shouldn’t Pakistani food taste good as well?
Where was it said it will taste bad?
I thought it was implied.