Indian Cuisine

When I was younger, I absolutely hated having to go out for Indian food, especially when we traveled. Even just a day into any trip, my parents already yearned for a simple meal of dal chawal (lentils and rice). Throughout the years, we have managed to find an Indian restaurant in every city we have traveled to...Paris, Zurich, New York, Tokyo, Bangkok...

Now I wasn't a picky child by any means, but the reason why I was so averse to going out for Indian food was the disparity between home-cooked and restaurant quality Indian food. Of course, I'm comparing my mother's cooking to someone else's and I am going to biased, but restaurant Indian food, especially outside of India, has never appealed to me.

Indian cuisine is often trademarked with two popular foods: butter chicken and naan. While both these foods are delicious, they do not encapsulate the entirety of Indian cuisine. Not all of our food consists of rich curries and heavy breads. In fact, these are foods that are rarely (if ever) made at home, and are only eaten on special occasions. The food we have at home is very simple, and far more nutritious and easier to digest than tikka masalas and garlic naans.

A standard Indian meal at our house is a dal (lentils), a vegetable (often cauliflower, eggplant or okra), raita (yogurt) and either chapati (flatbread) or rice. My family is Punjabi, and a staple in Punjabi food is serving any meal with cut salad, typically cucumbers and onions served with lemon juice and masala (spices). There is always a "curry" of some variety, whether it be dal, a meat curry or paneer with gravy, and there is always a vegetable. Our home cooked food is very different from what you would find in a restaurant. The novelty of an Indian restaurant is that they have a tandoor (clay oven), which allows them to prepare kebabs and naan. Food that is cooked in a tandoor has a beautiful charcoal flavor that cannot be replicated at home. Eating a chicken tikka, piping hot from the tandoor, wrapped in a crisp garlic naan will never compare to oven-heated kebabs and naan. While tandoori chicken and garlic naan are staple foods from my childhood, they do not provide the same feeling of comfort as eating a fresh chapati dunked in yellow dal and raita. This is why I was always so resistant to eating Indian food at restaurants. They fall short in comparison to the delicious food I was used to eating at home.

Even though I grew up in Hong Kong, I was lucky enough to visit India multiple times a year. Because of this, I was spoiled for good Indian food every few months. Any other Indian restaurant in Hong Kong, or anywhere else for that matter, was not a patch on the foods I was eating in Delhi...I mean look at all of this...

Nothing else can even come close to the foods above. I will admit though that some of the best butter chicken I have tasted has been in an Indian restaurant in a mall in Tokyo...My parents' incessant desire for Indian food has allowed me to try a variety of Indian-fusion cuisines, and it is interesting to compare how Indian food differs from country to country. The best tasting naan has been in Paris...crisp and dripping with butter. The baingan bharta (eggplant) in Boston is nearly as good as the one at home. And the chaat in London is almost as zesty and fresh as the one in Delhi. I'll save you a roundtrip across the globe for these dishes, and tell you to just come straight to Delhi. You'll thank me later.