Through a post on the News Tab (thanks Bobby32), I came across an interesting “local food tourism” piece in the New York Times, featuring Krishnendu Ray, a Professor of Food Studies at NYU (can anyone think of a better discipline to be in? I can’t).
Professor Ray is the author of an intriguing-looking book called The Migrant’s Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households.
The Times has the cerebral Prof. Ray go on a tour of a series of very different Desi restaurants around New York City, beginning with high-end fusion food in Manhattan (Angon), passing through Jackson Diner (a cross-over favorite), stopping by the Ganesh Temple Canteen in Flushing (intriguing choice), and ending at a working class place in Brooklyn called Pakiza.
Ray’s comments are really intriguing. First there is a general, theoretical comment about the function of the Desi restaurant as a space of cross-cultural interaction in American cities:
“The immigrant body is a displaced body — it reveals its habits much more than a body at home, because you can see the social friction,†Mr. Ray said. “The ethnic restaurant is one of the few places where the native and the immigrant interact substantively in our society.â€
Interesting — and possibly true. (Thoughts?) I think what Ray is getting at here is the fact that how we eat is both more intimate and harder to conceal than other aspects of cultural difference. In many other spheres, adaptation and mimicry can be pretty straightforward: you buy a certain kind of suit and shoes, and fit in at a workplace or school, more or less. But eating is closer to home, and the Indian restaurant in particular is a space where “old habits” (like, say, eating with one’s hands) can come out safely. But, as Ray also points out, the rules are somewhat different when the Indian restaurant in question has a mix of Desi and non-Desi patrons.
On $6 for a tiny, pyramid-shaped mound of Bhel Puri at Devi, Ray says:
“We like this very clever insider joke,†Mr. Ray continued. “We are taking something cheap and from the street, and reducing the quantity, turning it into a pyramid, putting it on a big plate, and all these white guys are paying 20 bucks for it.†(link)
Heh. His bewilderment at the idea of veal at a restaurant named “Devi,” as well as at the ingenious preposterousness of “Masala Schnitzel” is also worth a look. I also agree with him about the greatness of Saravanaas, on Lexington Avenue, and on a few other things as well.
interesting article, i can only hope that masala schnitzel isn’t adopted as a popular euphemism at parties.
I haven’t been to the one in New York, since I unknowingly walked into the cheap imitator with the intentionally deceptive name (I think it was this).
But I can definitely vouch for the fact that Saravana Bhavan in Mountain View is where it’s at. Right down to the big crowds of people hovering outside waiting for a table, the latticed rubber mats, and the blue tiled floors that evoke images of the down home T. Nagar branch.
Must be a nice gig at the university. He doesn’t even have to know how to cook. Just talk about some kinds of food and how it relates psychologically. We could do that on sepiamutiny for free.
Rahul you’re right.. the NY Saravana Bhavan has nothing to do with the Madras based chain. As I heard it, the story is that they opened in NY first assuming & held title to the name. Saravannas in NY is part of the real Saravana Bhavan franchise.
Fyi the Ganesh Temple canteen is the BEST dosa in town – highly reccomend!
For what its worth, my personal favorites for desi food around New York City:
Dosas: Sri Ganesh Dosa Hut Newark Avenue Jersey City, Canteen Flushing Temple Indian Chinese: Nanking Jersey City Late night: Kabab King, 27th and Madison and the Punjabi Delis at 50th and 10th and Houston Sri Lankan: Sigiri 1st avenue between 5th and 6th Bangladeshi: Kiran in Tribeca Cheap Pakistani food: Pakistan Tea house Church and Duane
Tamarind and Bukhara are my other favorites although on the expensive side.
slight possibly irrelevant digression; when i read the article a couple of days ago, it said that mr. ray is “from the bengal state of orissa”; kinda annoying, but maybe they corrected the mistake.
Outright false statement.
Moving on, Saravanaa is teh rock! I second brown on Nanking. Always wondered if it is word play as it makes a perfect name for a restaurant serving Indian Chinese food. It be the desi BK. MUCH better than Chinese Mirch in Manhattan which I found disappointing.
The ethnic restaurant is one of the ‘few’ places where the immigrant and native interact substantively? Hmmmm, that is the sort of soft sentence that can be stretched to mean almost anything and precisely nothing. I would think there are actually many places where an immigrant and native interact substantively. The workplace, shopping, driving (any travel, really), neighbors in mixed neigborhoods, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, spouses, teachers, children’s friends, children’s teachers, and so on. Why should the restaurant be any more substantive in terms of immigrant behavior ‘revealing itself’ so to speak?
I don’t care for the ‘all these white guys are paying 20 bucks for it’ vibe. It’s a bit rude to talk about customers, in particular their skin color, in this way, yes?
Off topic comment, but I think their customer service sucks, in both their Lexington Avenue and Oaktree Road branches. For the record though, I have never eaten out much in Chennai and people tell me that sucky customer service is a hallmark of all their branches, at least in Chennai.
Kurma,
Intersting theory on Nanking’s name, I believe there is more than one in Northeast and I used to go to one in Delhi as well, I am not sure if all are somehow related, and Chinese mirch is terrible, I went there once four years back and have never gone back.
I meant Saravanas.
Anantha, you can add Atlanta to that for bad service. And even their food here is not a great. Which is kind of tragic, since I felt that the food at the HSB in the Bay Area was some of the best South Indian food I had tasted in the US.
The $6 bhel puri reminds me of the new yuppie joints in India which serve gol gappe/paani puri/puchkas made with aqua fresh treated water and charge 10 times more than the tastier version found on the street outside these joints.
MD,
The ethnic restaurant is one of the ‘few’ places where the immigrant and native interact substantively? Hmmmm, that is the sort of soft sentence that can be stretched to mean almost anything and precisely nothing.
The phrasing might be too strong and stylized (“theory speak” one could call it)… Would it be more palatable to you if he said, “the Indian restaurant is a place where an unusual kind of interaction can occur”? I think his idea is that the restaurant is in a sense a kind of surrogate home, where immigrants can go and still “be themselves.” That is still to some extent true in restaurants that have mixed patronage, but the dynamics change. (Perhaps the real attraction of “authentic” food for many desi immigrants isn’t the restaurant, so much as the atmosphere…?)
I don’t care for the ‘all these white guys are paying 20 bucks for it’ vibe. It’s a bit rude to talk about customers, in particular their skin color, in this way, yes?
I have to admit I thought it was funny the way he phrased it. But one of the things his comment overlooks is the fact that many of us desis are perfectly willing to spend $6 for Bhel Puri as well. It becomes less of a postcolonial joke, and more of a general, capitalist one (along the lines of Ardy’s comment #11).
Actually what is more tragic is that the food rocks. My personal litmus test for any desi restaurant claiming to serve authentic south Indian food is the taste of the sambhar. The benchmark for me is this restuarant barely a mile away from home in T.Nagar (Chennai) and both the Saravanas/HSB branches here in NY/NJ match up quite well.
whoa dude! even critics go to a restaurant tvice before committing a ‘pinion. i’ve only been to the atlanta ‘vanaa vunce but their rasam was quite spicy. made the scalp sweat svine.
Saravana Bhavan chain restaurant food might be good but my food experience has not been uniform in all the places. What was uniform though was the service which is pathetic and atrocious. Usually I go with low expectations in terms of service when I goto any Indian food place and this place doesn’t even match those. Particularly the one in Bay Area.
What is this service you speak of, in Indian restaurants? But seriously, I’ve never had any reason to complain in the Bay area one. That said, your experience depends to some extent on the calibration of your expectations, I guess.
And twice it was here. Both the service and the food quality got worse the second time (the first time was close to their opening). And I did not say that the food sucked, it was just quite ordinary.. some things were good, others were not. Definitely not close to the kind I had eaten at the other HSB. Yes, the service is consistently sucky though.
agreed. ven brudda vants rasam he NEEEEEEEEDDDDS rasam. service be damned.
btw. happy pongal y’all.
happy lohri too.
chew some revdi for me, ok?
pravin is right. can the guy cook. heck, i’d trust padma’s ‘pinions pefor paadendu pennyday.
Rasam lifts me up when I’m feeling low. Anyone know about armpit dosas?
Chumps! I’m not desi, but I am tight with the wad. I’ve learned to make my own desi food, made a tomato saar last night – easy and delicious! (I’m hoping this thread will turn into a recipe-swapping orgy.) Where’s yogi?
On a random note I just want to note how much of a baller amardeep is. His posts are always interesting and just plain fun most of the time. Good job.
The food especially on weekends at the Ganesh temple canteen rocks. For $7 you can eat a thali like a king and it’s loads of food. I’m so addicted to the Tamarind rice and yogurt from the temple now I think I eat it 2-3 times a week. IMO the Dosas and vadas are better outside the temple at Dosa Hut though.
Other less glitzy favorites in NY….
Damn I’m drawing a blank on the name but there is a Punjabi Pizzeria on the corner of Lefferts and Atlantic Avenue in Richmond Hills that makes the most amazing fresh Punjabi food as well as fantastic parathas.
I’m particularly addicted to Hot Breads (a desi owned bakery chain) that has stores all over NJ and a few in NY. I had no idea this place existed until recently. LOVE IT!!
I’m quite partial to Vatan on 3rd Avenue in NY. It’s vegetarian Gujrati food and comes pretty close to authentic.
Another place I love is Coromandel in New Rochelle. It has Indian Calamari to die for. Everything else is consistently well made.
True, my expectations might be misplaced, somewhat. I expect water and menu cards at the table soon after I sit down, unless its the dosa places in Newark avenue. While menu cars do come to you, water does not, unless you ask for it, which is minor and I will ignore it since it is crowded. But I do get a customer be damned vibe because more effort seems to go into pushing me out. Almost every single time, I get the check before I ask for it and before I finish eating. And the only thing that takes me back there everytime is the absolutely divine rava kesari.
But my favorite instance of “desi customer service” happened in this restaurant in Newark (DE) when the restaurant owner/manager read the words on my t-shirt (“No car, no money, no job. But I am in a band!”) and came to me and offered me a job as a waiter. It was so obvious because the dude was staring at my chest for a minute from his desk.
JOAT: Yes, Hot Bread rocks. Another Chennai import, ya’all!
Personally, I just found the comments thread here more insightful than the NYT piece. But for this, I’ll not blame Professor Ray, but the author.
Sadly, I have to say that Ray’s book isn’t very good either, despite being “interesting-looking,” but I guess it got him out of writing up a world-systems-theory sociology dissertation (as he explains in the preface, if I recall correctly). I was disappointed in its evidence and interpretation. More importantly, how do you make Bengali cooking (and the inevitable squabbling over it)so boring?
And contra the claim in the article, you can totally find Bangladeshi-identified restaurants in Astoria.
Ok Bess, I will take the bait. Spill it out.
you’re a sport, bytewords! I’m wanting to know if it’s a TN joke or just some inside joke of a few Tamil friends who say some of the *best dosas are the ones that you buy from an, armpit-exposed (with occasional itch) street vendor in TN. It sounds like “kichi” dosa *That is, the best when they’re away from home.
20 · khoofia said
happy lohri, khoof. what i would give for a nice bonfire, some dhol, and a gathering of solicitous neighborhood-punjabi-aunties. also, speaking of punjabi aunties, anyone know of a place has a fine makki di roti and sarson da saag? so delicious on a winter night. and gajar ka halwa after.
no pictures with a food post? 🙁
I don’t know what he is talking about. Last time I went to Niagara falls, I saw a desi girl interactively substantively with a gora.. espescially with her tongue
Jokes aside. Most of our interactions with non-desi folks are at work, school, neighborhood. Desi restaurants are where we go to escape back into desiness. Office potlucks and birthday parties are really where we immigrants really get to interact with natives.
I haven’t heard the term armpit dosa, but the heightening of flavors when mixed by a cook with burgeoning man boobs, dripping rivulets of sweat, massively dishevelled hair, and a towel tenuously draped over one shoulder, served by a bustling 30 year old “bai”, and eaten with a generous waft of roadside aromas and truck exhaust is an undisputed scientific fact.
Why did he omit takeout Thai and a steaming pile of BS from the list?
i resemble that remark yaar shakes his manboobs into the screen 🙂 besides … a bony cook. tchee.tchee.tchee. that’s just shameful.
Happy Lohri PortManteau. It’s the end of vinter, vont’ you know. woohoo. the days are getting longer. this is the best time of the year.
7 · Kurma – bewildered at the bewilderment said
Hmm.. Nanking might have been a good play on words, if Indian Chinese food was big on Naan, which it isn’t. They might as well call themselves PongalKing. I think it’s more like Indians found oriental sounding words that end with “King” to name the restaurants with.
Amardeep,
Yes, I prefer the second and less exciting formulation: an interesting interaction may take place at an ethnic restaurant.
As for the second point, I know Ray meant to be funny, but I just kind of felt like he was saying customers were suckers for paying 20 bucks for fancied-up street food, but I guess if you are not a foodie that’s how all ‘top class’ restaurants make you feel…..
I second the rec on the dosas at Dosa Hutt around the corner from the Ganesh Temple being better than the ones in the temple canteen itself…
And yeah I was really surprised to see the Hot Breads franchise popping up in NY/NJ, since I remember it from Hyderabad. Surprised but happy… they have curry puffs! Now if only there was a place in the U.S. that replicated street-side pani puri, my palate would be sated.
The bad service is a must have in Desi restt. In the restt reviews in SJ Mercury News one common theme seems to be that the waiters were rushed or didn’t explain the menu to the reviewers, and obviously they can’t explain the drill to these goras. The point of eating at these cheap desi joints is the food not the ambiance/serivce/atmosphere etc. I am a little surprised that Ray is an expert on eating out at desi joints and says veal may not belong on the menu. The highest mark up seems to be in meat. Who will pay $40 for a vege dish? Profit margins may depend on pushing the cumin crusted steak !! The bay area has many new such upscale desi places specifically for whities in adventurous moods and they all have exotic names like Tamarind/Amaranth/Turmeric etc. And these are hardly places where one can be desi comfortably unlike the generic “cuisine of India” kind of places. So perhaps Ray should stick to the small hole in the wall stores where we can be “substantively interacting immigrants “.
ha!! good point.
nala, come to gerard st in toronto for that pani puri you’re craving. but the aunties wear white surgical gloves when dipping so you will lose out on the terroir.
Vatan (mentioned earlier) has excellent service.
The less packed Oak tree road / Newark Av restaurants have been hospitable and they are inexpensive to boot. (many of these have waiters who are also the owners and a bit of banter makes the dining experience really nice)
I have had mixed service at Tangra Masala , but keep going back for more (since its easily the best Indo-Chinese joint in the NY area)
the one in Flushing, or in New Hyde Park?
aunties serving pani puri?? the mind boggles.
My cousin ran an Indian restaurant. If I ever run an Indian restaurant, I am getting rid of tips and building it into the food price. He told me there were quite a few rich Indians who were among the worst tippers. And these were people who have lived her for a while. Maybe that’s why you get the bad service. You can’t hire a decent waiter for those tips.
Also, Tandoor on Queens Blvd. has been around forever and has really good tandoori chicken. Their staff is kind of creepy though. Which brings me to something I’ve always wondered- why is the staff of desi restaurants almost always unanimously male? I know it probably has to do with immigration demographics since the waitstaff is mostly made up of immigrants. But imagine a more upscale Indian version of Hooters, with hot exotic desi women with long hair wearing saris and serving you platters of samosas and vadas. A place like that would be off the hook.
Don’t a lot of places already do that, and include the tip in the bill?
37 · nala said
Hot Breads is in Houston, too! I LOVE LOVE LOVE their Black Forest cake. Yum-o.
I was actually going to mention that! I love it too. It’s Indian-style.
HOLD UP LEMME REDO THAT COMMENT!
37 · nala said
Hot Breads is in Houston, too! I LOVE LOVE LOVE their Black Forest cake. Yum-o.
44 · nala said
Not most of the restaurants in New York. When it’s a group over 6, you’ll see certain restaurants include the tip into the bill. That’s not a hard and fast rule but you should expect it.
BTW, I disagree with you about Tandoor on Queens Blvd. Try Santoor in New Hyde Park.
Been there too! Their chicken makhani is amaaazing, especially if it’s spicy.
Damn… I haven’t eaten all day.
40 · DizzyDesi said
My family goes there all the time!!!