In an attempt to review a restaurant for this week's'Belly Dance', I wandered into a restaurant without doing any homework, on the strength of the promise of its name alone. "Aah," said rock chick regular dining companion, "You thought you would discover the next Gajalee?"
Alas, it was not to be. The restaurant, which I shall not name, turned out to be a fine example of everything that's wrong with the way Indian food is presented in public. You could tell from the way it smelled when you first walked in — an overbearing sense of a thousand masalas being cooked together.
This then comes to you in a thick greenish-yellow sauce or a red sauce. Neither has the slightest connection to any food ever served in Indian homes. Yet it is now considered the staple of all Indian restaurants of this type.
The food cannot be categorised as either Mughlai or Punjabi or North Indian but it usually presents itself as such.
Needless to say, it is also immensely rich in oil, ghee and/or butter. It is also tasteless. If you blend every spice known to humankind into one dish the chances are the result will taste like nothing. Shaving paneer or processed cheese and sprinkling chopped coriander leaves on top does not absolve the cook.
Yet, none of this tasteless gunk comes cheap. I would categorise this as a middle level eaterie, quite well-appointed, a good bar menu and a decent ear for muzak. Yet each non-vegetarian dish cost nothing less than about Rs300. That's daylight robbery whichever way you look at it. Why do people pay for it? Is this all that they deserve when they go out to eat? How do the restaurants get away with it?
I feel it's because both diners and restaurants have fallen into a trap. People want to go out to eat, but they do not want to be too adventurous, nor do they want to eat what they get at home. This is the lowest common denominator alternative. Adding lots of fat and spice means that you are getting something for your money.
The taste becomes the casualty. The restaurants are in a similar state — businesses run without imagination and culinary flair, they just copy each other till you touch the current depths of quality and taste.
Perhaps the time has come for some brave restaurateurs to break out of this trap and rescue themselves and diners. I spent Rs2,000 to eat a very bad approximation of Koliwada fish, Hyderabadi kheema and Goan prawn curry.
None of the three owed anything to the regions they purported to come from but they all belonged to the land of bad Indian restaurant food. It's not a country we should want to belong to.
Meanwhile, my search for the next great find continues.
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