I can’t begin a food post without sharing an experience from a few nights ago. A group of us had dinner at Indus Valley, a reasonably well-regarded desi restaurant at 100th and Broadway in New York. At some point the composer Philip Glass walked in, and one of our group, a big fan, went into a state of beatific darshan that threatened to destabilize our meal. It got worse when Glass and his companion sat at the table next to ours. My fellow diner was finally able to compose himself, give Glass props, and return to getting our eat on.
Suddenly another of my companions let out a piercing yell and pushed back from the table with great speed. Yes, there was a big old cockroach crawling up the tablecloth — not the short dark ones you often see in NYC kitchens, but a tropical-quality beast, two or three inches long (though not the flying kind). A minor tamasha ensued, during which Philip Glass turned to me and said, with an air of wisdom, “Don’t worry, they have very small appetites.”
Cockroaches happen; celebrity sightings happen too. But what was truly shocking was that the macacas brothers running the restaurant did not comp us even a round of drinks or dessert, let alone a meal, in recognition of the disgusting insect experience. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised us, seeing that they were already trying to seat a couple at a nearby two-top while the cockroach hunt was still on, but come on, what the hell kind of restaurant management is that? So, folks, if you go to Indus Valley at 100th and Broadway, watch out for big-ass cockroaches and don’t expect a discount.
Which brings me to the subject at hand. Perhaps in response to a desi dining landscape that, except in a few fortunate neighborhoods and towns, consists of the same old slop doled out from the same buffets, plus a few “nice” places that look fancy but aren’t necessarily up to snuff in the hygiene department, the idea of desi fast food — cheap, standardized and franchised — becomes a more and more compelling alternative.
We’ve mentioned this before, with reference to the Hot Breads bakery chain, but now here is another entrepreneur heading this way, this time from an unlikely starting point in New England:
Yogi Sood sits in front of his restaurant in the food court at the Burlington Mall talking strategy with his son. The conversation is not about recipes or vendors or price points. Their recipes already are great, their vendors steady, their prices fair.
Rather, this debate is about the speed at which they should conquer the world. Yogi, a 57-year-old retired engineer and the founder of Gourmet India, wants to do it quickly. Now. Yesterday.
“Fifty franchises in five years,” he says.
Vishnal Sood, 24, raises an eyebrow. He is deferential to his father but the eyebrow is ominous.
Yogi interprets: “My son thinks I’m a bit ambitious,” he says. Then he laughs.
The Soods’ company, Gourmet India, has franchises in well-selected, semi-upscale or well-trafficked malls in the Boston area. The idea is to make desi food ubiquitous in mall food courts. I would imagine there are other regional chains starting up in different parts of the country on exactly the same premise.
Still, a national chain? “It’s a big leap,” says Harry Balzer, an expert in the eating habits of Americans. “People’s taste changes very slowly.”
Sood is nonplussed. Indian food will be to the ethnic food market what Chinese food became 20 years ago, he says. He looks around the mall’s food court. Some of the heavy hitters of the franchise restaurant business are his neighbors: Pizzeria Regina, Johnny Rockets, Quiznos. “We’re already among the most popular here,” he says.
The article treads the usual ground (with a punning title too lame to repeat here): how the US market for desi food is different from the UK, etc. Still, the question is there and it’s surely worth a lot of money: what are the chances, and what would it take, to make desi food a ubiquitous option in the malls, airports and train stations of America, like pizza and Chinese?
kathi rolls.
Add some cheese and ketchup. 🙂
what are the chances, and what would it take, to make desi food a ubiquitous option in the malls, airports and train stations of America, like pizza and Chinese?
i luv most brown food…but, it doesn’t “present” well. to not put a fine point on it, it looks as it was chewed up and regurgitated. also, too spicey for most americans,* which is one reason that punjabi cuisine (tandoori?) is dominant in the USA, not because the food is tastier, but cuz there is less spice and more meat. right?
anyway, for brown food to be as ubiquitous as pizza & chinese, it will have to become what chinese fast food is: chinese themed food which is more american than any regional chinese dish.
Eh.. I don’t know. Food at Chaat Cafe looks pretty good when it comes to your table. Though I’m not sure if it counts as a fast food place or a fancy restaurant. It’s got aspects of both.
Dude, wtf are you talking about? Even if you were right about how “brown food” presents (and you’re not), you’re in the country which invented sloppy joes. Whatever.
Wherever an Udipi Palace has opened in the States it’s been wildly successful, and that’s South Indian veg. cuisine. I don’t know why there aren’t more South Indian restaurants out there, and I really wish more of them were non-veg. There are times I would kill for a Chettinad fish fry or chicken ’65. From what little I’ve seen, whenever anyone actually opens up a South Indian place, it’s successful.
There I agree with you – and if it uses less oil than Chinese food, it might actually win out over Chinese.
I cannot speak about Gourmet India, but I’ve had other desi mall food, and it was, frankly, bad. I think the first thing to focus on is making it good, and making it ubiquitous should be a secondary focus. This might sound trivial, but the fact is that most Indian fast food in India is tasty (though no doubt quite unhealthy), whereas the desi mall food that I have been exposed to simply is not tasty enough to attract people’s interest or liking.
z0mg Philip Glass!!! :O
one place…simply refused to crank it up like how i wanted, and the servers and management was brown!
When my little brother was vegan for 9 years, he and his (all white) friends used to go pig out constantly at the Indian buffet near my mom’s house. One day one of his friends ordered a dish off the menu and the waiter was like “No.” He’s all, no really, I’d like to order this dish. “No. Too spicy for you.” Dude, I LIKE this dish! “No.” (apologetic head waggle) The guy WOULDN’T serve it to him! Ha ha ha ha… But on that tip, I think Indian cuisine (and all the South Indian veg restaurants) definitely appeals to the veggie contingent — we’d never eaten ANY ethnic food growing up in the midwest, and when bro went vegan he had to suddenly learn to like a lot of things. He says even now he could eat Indian food every day for the rest of his life and be fine.
My little bland palate was recently introduced to parathas for breakfast cooked by a Punjabi mom, with onions and chilis and some other spices, dripping with melted butter — I’d never had them that way before! SO much better than any I’ve had at restaurants. I wanted to take a stack home and eat nothing else for a week. I bet I could even make sandwiches with that kind of bread. So I vote for those to go into mall chains to appeal to us whiteys. 😉 And you know what? Come to think of it, I had my first Indian food ever at a mall in L.A.! They were handing out little bites of chicken tikka masala on toothpicks and I found it much more appealing than stuff I’d seen and smelled elsewhere. And now I can eat spicier stuff. Small steps, yo.
Razib,
You’re right about the meat element, but Punjabi food is often extremely spicy. Maybe it depends on where you go and who is doing the cooking, I guess. But lack of masala isn’t usually an issue with Punjabi food — frequently the opposite 😉
As a point of comparison, Indian food is popular in the UK to the extent of being regarded as the number 1 choice of cuisine by British people (all Brits, not just the desis). Indian restaurants are ubiquitous, and the food is generally a Punjabi/Mughlai hybrid (apart from high-density Gujarati locations and Bangalore-style fast-food places which include South Indian food and the usual Chinese/Indian hybrid). Ironically, most of the “Indian” restaurants in non-desi locations here are actually owned by Bangladeshis 😉
Broadly-speaking, Indian food here is predominantly popular for formal dining or take-outs; it hasn’t really taken off as “fast food” although there have been some efforts in this regard. I believe some entrepreurially-minded person is currently attempting a “Tiffin”-style fast-food chain in London, for example.
The strong smell and oiliness of much of the food may indeed have something to do with it. If it wasn’t so, er, aromatic and could be eaten with a knife and fork (which is obviously a problem with parathas, rotis, naan etc), then perhaps it would be a different matter.
Typo: should say “entrepreneurially-minded”.
Really funny anecdote.
It’s interesting to read the comments about food not being spicy enough. I have the opposite problem. Due to a chronic affliction I am barred from eating spicy meals. Honestly I don’t miss it much, save for those appetizing mango pickles. All of this actually presents a huge problem when I visit India – at all times I have to ask for ‘very mild’ and even then it’s often too spicy. At least I’m glad I’m not Telugu.
First of all:
Awesome! Second of all: That is so disappointing. I’m in that nabe a lot and really like Indus Valley. Third of all: Once, I was eating at famously-vegetarian Vatan, as a child, back in my vegetarian days, and I bit into a kheema samosa! Two words: not cool.
Sid: EAT YOUR COCKROACH; KIDS IN INDIA ARE STARVING. Peace
Indian food in Britain has become mass market because it has become pizza-fied and chop-suey-fied. Chicken Tikka Masala, Curry Sauce, all standardised generic inventions for the British palatte.
It’s not all like that, and if you chatted to white Brits, you would be surprised how much they know about Indian food, because lots of them are more adventurous than just that, at least my friends are, and all know what mattar paneer and saag is, for example. Plus London has a much wider variety of Indian restaurants than elsewhere in the country because the Indian community is so diverse, so as well as the typical ‘curry house’ you have ‘authentic’ South Indian in Tooting, Punjabi in Southall, Gujarati in Wembley, lots of Keralan restaurants in central London and so on, there is even a Parsi restaurant in Highgate.
Indian food (the standardised fare, heavily influenced by Punjabi staples) is as British as fish and chips and roast beef.
This is the 1st time that I’ve heard someone complain that desi food is NOT spicy!
btw..even small college towns in US can boast of 3-4 Indian restaurants.
i agree with vivek. if i were a fast food investor, i’d put my money in decent kati rolls, though they’d need to be a bit less oily than the ones in midtown and the village — which i love, mind you — to really take off. there’s a decent, relatively new (last two years or so), equally oily roti roll place up on 109th and amsterdam.
which makes me think — we haven’t talked about “sepia destiny” in a while. how about licensing the sepia trade dress for a fast food place? kinda like a desi taco bell, without the stereotyped imagery that episodically appears in their marketing. and then amardeep can finally start his column — “at lunch at the sepia snack bar.”
not cool at all! but what a missed opportunity. if it had been mcdonald’s, rather than vatan, you could have made a killing, but even from vatan you could have
extorted a few bucksobtained appropriate compensation for your emotional distress. and by now the statute of limitations has probably run….Honey, the roaches down here are so big they have social security numbers. You sure you want to visit with Lolis?
One or two big ones are not a hygiene issue at all, actually, as they are “palmetto” bugs that hang out in moist areas. The ones you have to watch out for and report are the little ones – that means the big ones are reproducing and it’s time for Hazmat Suits and a big ol’ Roach Bomb. Don’t call the health board on the poor Indus Valley bruthas just yet.
Says the one who is deathly scared of roaches, lives in a town full of them and now hands out advice on how to handle the ugly critters.
Ironically, if you want good desi fast food, at least south indian food, one of the places I highly recommend is your local temple. There’s nothing like a meal made out of sambar chadam, puliyodhare (tamarind rice), and thair chadam (yogurt rice) that costs a grand total of $3.00. If the temples have figured it out, I’m sure some entrepeneureal spirit out there can market it. I’m not sure why the idea of desi fast food hasn’t caught on, especially the veggie dishes. All those dishes, regardless of whether north or south indian, are conducive to being made in large quantities that can easily be reheated. Just makes economic sense, to me.
why is Boston such an unlikely place? Actually if it is then unlikelier the better because nothing has happend from NY or LA.
why the hell were you up in Harlem anyway? serves you right.
?? 100th and Broadway is the Upper West Side! And what’s wrong with Harlem anyway? They have some amazing restaurants there.
I’ve been to Indus Valley… very mediocre fare. Its just another restaurant peddling faux desi food.
Is there anywhere I can get puliogre in NYC?
Is there anywhere I can get puliogre in NYC?
Ganesha Temple, Queens.
There is a restaurant at the food court in the Santa Monica Mall in California (the one that has an entrance at one end of 3rd Street Promenade) that used to/still makes Curry Bowls. They used to have lines on those days because people would find the Basmati Rice with a curry of your choice combo very easy to eat and enjoy. For every desi person, there were about 3 non desis waiting in line for the ‘chawal murg’ bowl. Smart
Sriram (#19):
TOTALLY! Actually often I go to temples just for the canteen…
Puliogre in da USA (#23):
There’s a cluster of South Indian restaurants around 29th and Lexington (including the only non-veg South Indian place I’ve ever seen in the US) where you’re sure to find some.
On that note, does anyone know where to find good non-veg South Indian?
And if they don’t have it, there’s a little South Indian place two doors down where you might find it.
Before reading reviews for restaurants, I check up on the inspection records for the establishment first. Trust me, you’ll want to. I checked up on Indus Valley from the restaurant inspection information for NYC, and it says
I personally use the Florida DPBR page to access such information. For example, a recent check on a supposedly fantastic Indian resturant here came up with stuff like this:
tilotamma,
you make a good point. sometimes the unlikely place of origin becomes an asset. as for why boston is “unlikely,” it’s simply because the desi community in that region is very scattered. there’s no central place like devon ave or edison or jackson heights or that town in orange county (i forget which one now. santa ana?)
“achat,”
why the hell should i answer such idiocy? oh, because even the trolls are useful sometimes in that they pose questions that some readers would like to have elucidated but were always afraid to ask. in that spirit of education and service, i draw your attention to dr gangolphus’s comment:
not harlem by any stretch. moreover, would you like to specify what your problem is with harlem? i live in harlem. wanna come visit? i’ll show you around, if you dare.
this concludes this morning’s troll education segment. i made my karma points, now i can go back to selling crack and robbing convenience stores.
” i made my karma points,”
Yeah, but apparently you haven’t paid for your ancestor’s past COLLECTIVE KARMA (still fuming over that bogus theory). 😉
First of all, OMyGanesha–Philip Glass!!
On a trip to Madras I once encountered a “Dosa King” a free standing vending machine that made masala dosas on the spot. If anyone knows where to find one, I’ll fritter away my dowry and make room in my study for it : )
Yes, it would be great to cop a katti roll or a samosa w/o having to make a trip to a little India type placeÂ… but I doubt the broader appeal of Indian curries. Even the voice of love has to admit that brown food is typically, and boringly, brown-hued. Other than the odd green pea or a cilantro garnish, everything looks the same.
Has anyone been in the strange position where a chance-met acquaintance developed an instant craving for Indian food on seeing you? Happened to me–hehe
I’m not sure where you are, but I can tell you in the DC area there are none that I know of.
On that note, does anyone know where to find good non-veg South Indian?
Toronto 🙂
In this area I’m not sure. I went to Andhra Palace in Edison? a while back, and they had some good (but very hot!) fare.
I swear, i meant to say “Chennai.” Chennai, not Madras.
Oh. In Jersey City (on Newark Avenue) theres a place called Baba Hut run by a guy from Hyderabad, he has lots of South Indian non-veg items. He’ll even cater. PATH ride over.
fantastic. would be a great premise for a slightly off-kilter short story. write it, and i’ll be happy to help edit and we can post it.
Siddhartha,
strange you should say that 🙂
[going to S’s site now]
When I’m in Bangalore I make it a point to eat at least two rava idli every day. Invariably, I pine for them the moment I leave. Mavalli Tiffin Rooms rocks the culinary casbah! What I wouldn’t do for a MTR venue in the U.S.! (Sadly, the packaged MTR rava idli mix is about as palatable as tennis balls.)
I feel like there is serious appeal in easily portable, relatively healthy, “presentable”, desilicious items like rava idli, iddiappam and certain chaat concoctions. The chic industrial aesthetic / reusable (and thus environmentally friendly) aspect of tiffin containers doesn’t seem to have been capitalized on quite yet (perhaps because of the collective scaring among second generation desis who endured so many family road trips featuring tamarind rice filled tiffin containers, when what you really wanted was Popeye’s…?).
Plus, the last time I was at Brueggers Bagels I noted that they’ve managed to make the otherwise quotidian act of boiling of dough into a form of entertainment (as aided by large glass windows that allow customers to peer into the bagel making area), so I think the art of ek metre chai, would be at least as compelling to watch. Sort of like watching pizza dough being tossed, only with the added allure of potentially scalded appendages.
I don’t know that I’d be happy to see Indian items enter the market a la Taco Bell, but something akin to Wagamamas – which, according to the website, was inspired by Japanese ramen bars – would be nice. And I do think the stateside popularity of tapas and dim sum and sushi and meze seems to bode weill for tiffin-style food.
So that said, where all my epicurean hipster desi investors at ?!
[*Philip ‘Passages’ Glass in the flesh? Dang, bro…]
A great variation on this theme was a cartoon that showed an Indian mom with her 2 little kids seated at the dining table, with the kids staring reluctantly at their veggies. The caption said something like – Go on, eat your veggies. Think of the millions of Americans living on junk food.
When I’m in Chennai I make it a point to visit Sharavana Bhavan (aka, heaven). The chain has spread stateside, but it’s just not the same.
Lots of vegetarians like frequenting the South Indian restaurants because of the rich variety in vegetarian dishes offered in most South Indian restaurants. I think the vegan non desi Americans are a big market and the South Indian restaurants can really target this market. They also tend to be more cosmopolitan on average and thus more likely to try out Indian food.
I never really ate any South Indian food till I went to a South Indian restaurant with some vegetarians. Of course I was embarrassed by the fact that they knew more than me and they ordered some real stuff while I ended up sheepishly ordering cholla batura and samosay. After being exposed for my uncouthness and savagery, I have now learnt to enjoy the charms of a good vegetarian South Indian cuisine 😉
shiver, I just checked -rechecked my desk and dusted myself off after reading that. Whats even funnier is that you expected to be comp at a desi place.
That place is little and cheap also. The best in Indian sq for Dosas.
Indian food is known for its spicyness and non-desis always complain about how their digestive system doesnt have the capacity to handle it.
I don’t know any “white” or non-desi person who doesn’t like Indian food. The market exists, in spades. A good dosa chain could be very successful here, as long as it doesn’t follow the vile and disgusting path of the “Hamptons Chutney Company” or whatever it’s called (truly gross). Dosas would be great for people timidly dipping their toe (what an image) into “spicy,” since the dosa itself is mild and they can control how much flavor to add via chutneys.
I really don’t understand this perception that “Americans” can’t handle spice. Thai food is popular. Mexican food is popular. Yes, a lot of places dumb it down for cowardly tongues, but plenty offer the real deal, at least in major cities where peoples’ palates are more educated.
And when are you gonna make that food tab? Huh?
Toronto is pretty awesome, you can get Indian style Hakka Chinese food cooked by actual ethnic Chinese people from India at multiple different restaurants. I didn’t even know there were ethnic Chinese in India, till I visited Toronto. 🙂
Indeed! Sad, no?
I don’t know how many of you have ever been to Grand Sweets in Chennai, but when they hand out free samples of tamarind rice, yoghurt rice, or whatever other delicious items they’re handing out for free, they do it in bowls made of some sort of pressed leaf – palm frond? If fast-food varieties of South Asian food do indeed become ubiquitous in the States, I hope someone also decides to serve it in this environmentally friendly (and probably dirt-cheap) packaging as far as possible…
HA! Patrons might then opt to sign a disclaimer for the added pleasure of drinking from a tumbler-davara…
Surprised and sorry to read this. I looove Hampton Chutney Company. What’s not to like? They also dish out the regular potato dosas for those who like their meals traditional style. Meanwhile, the rest of the world can gorge on dosa with feta cheese and olives and the myriad other concoctions. In fact, I’m hoping to see more white Americans jump on the bandwagon and do for biryani etc. what HCC has done for the dosa.
Banana leaves are only environmentally friendly if they grow locally, which they don’t anywhere in the mainland US. They’d have to be imported and coddled and probably irradiated against parasites…not worth it. Just one of those many things that necessarily makes a cuisine adapt to differeent regions.
Gautham – may I ask where in the US you live?
Toronto is pretty awesome, you can get Indian style Hakka Chinese food cooked by actual ethnic Chinese people from India at multiple different restaurants. I didn’t even know there were ethnic Chinese in India, till I visited Toronto. 🙂
Yeah dude. There’s one Hakka Chinese place run by an Indian-Chinese guy from Kolkata who can speak Bengali and Hindi. There’s lots of Sri Lankan Tamil non-vegetarian places that serve exquiste Chettinad food. I even went to an Indo-Kenyan place run by guys who immigrated from Kenya. And then theres Persian, Afghani… – and just about every other one of the 200 ethnic groups has some sort of culinary representation. I’m from NYC, went to school there. But I’m sorry, there’s simply no culinary comparison with Toronto. Daniel, Union Square Cafe… please!
Me, too. My friend took her Chennai-based mother- and father-in-law, who were skeptical at first, and they ABSOLUTELY loved it. Thought the dosas were perfectly made and the fillings were divine. They went back several times while they were in NYC.