'Parantha', and now the American donut arriving to dish out
competition to 'desi' dough for a slice of the Big Fat Indian Tali, global cuisine is slowly but surely making a conquest of our cosmopolitan taste buds, writes chetna keerSunita Narain may now have to eat humble pie during peak hour footfall frenzy at a global fast food eatery in upmarket India.
Nah, not because that's the newest entrant on the McMenu, nor because the burger biggies now have their fingers in too many pies instead of in French fries. But because the happy faces in the happy hours at the foreign fast food chains dotting India Shining's foodscape don't really seem to be chewing on Sunita's recent words about all the global trans fat that makes it to the Big Fat Indian Thali in the shape of American pizzas, British burgers, Italian pastas, French fries, Kentucky chicken and what not.
Never mind the latest Adipose Expose that Sunita's Centre for Science and Environement (CSE) dished out a few weeks ago about how the high amount of trans fats in the happy meals of fast food brands can lead to obesity in kids, much of Insatiable India is happy grabbing a bite of its globalised menu and thinks it a time waste to worry about what it does to the waist.
Never mind if Sunita says that "a child eating one McDonald's Happy Meal finishes up 90 per cent of all his daily requirement of trans fats." This dietary damper isn't really food for thought for the ABCD (American Bread Consuming Desi) swiping his credit card at a Brigade Road KFC in Bengaluru or a Malad McDonald's in Mumbai and wiping his hand on "Finger Lickin' Good" tissue wipes. The CSE's poison is the globalised foodie's Pizza Mexicana.
Never mind the burger-bashers, waist-watchers and the puri-sts (of the aloo-puri allegiance). The Great Globalised Thali is very much here to bite into our food retail pie and this cuisine colonisation is very much on India Dining's menu.
Never mind party poopers Sunita & Co and the happy meal haters, it's party time for the pizza platter! And more global guests are stepping in to join the party, rather host this party.
Burger King, Starbucks and other food majors are on the guest list that is poised to make an India footprint this season by joining the club of foreign chains — Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Domino's, KFC, etc., that have already made a conquest of our cosmopolitan palates. Dunkin' Donuts has already become the newest American kid on the Indian bloc this summer, arriving ahead of the scheduled arrival of its rival Starbucks in September this year.
The invasion of Insatiable India's tastebuds, accomplished thus far by the zingers and zing kong boxes from the forerunners in this fast food footprint frenzy, will now be consolidated by this season's starters, Dunkin' Donuts et al. Ciabatta sandwiches and donuts from Massachusetts will soon make it to platters in Malabar Hill or M G Road. And hamburgers from Florida could soon foray on to foodie menus in a Friends Colony or food street in New Delhi, with American Burger King also poised to piggyback into India, riding on one of the largest European restaurant players, AmRest Holdings. Poland-based AmRest has already announced its intent to join this party by dishing out its special slice of Italy to India, and also for the first time to Asia, with Italian food brand La Tagliatella set to open shop this summer.
For all this globalisation of appam-and-aloo-parantha-addicted appetites, we have those economic visionaries in North Bloc to thank, who invited global food giants to a business lunch and also the inter-continental invitees who came calling and stayed on to give us dinner, breakfast and even brunch. The opening of the food retail sector to global brands did for the Indian thali what the opening up of the airwaves to television channels did for Doordarshan: It gave Indians a door ka darshan.
And this darshan of donut or doner-kebab biggies has come riding on those larger-than-life canvases for our cosmopolitan consumer-scape, the blinking billboards, which are to India Shining's mall culture what the breaking news tickers are to its media explosion. The logos of global food brands, emblazoned across the neon-glowing face of new India, are thus becoming the insignias of the imperialism of the Indian palate.
The mall-packaged pizza and pasta have thus come competing with the poor ol' parantha for a place on the desi's daily thali. The globally branded McAloo Tikki is vying with the street-stamped vada-paav. The Subway sandwich is challenging 'sadda' samosa for a slice of the retail snack pie.
In this multiplex-ised foodscape of metropolitan India, where the signboard of a streetside dosa-doling Udupi hotel is rubbing shoulders with the mammoth hoardings of an American 'Richie Rich' and where the Italian Diva lures the desi into dietary submission; being a Puri-st of the Palate is indeed a stiff challenge in the face of videshi pasta puri-sts.
And for all the taste buds being weaned away from the local purist platter and for all the footfalls that have the global food going strong, some credit should be going to the Indian on the go. Thanks to our corporate clones of that tribe of Touring Harry in a Tearing Hurry, who, in the pursuit of mammon scarcely have time for a morsel, there has been cooked up that new-age short-cut for gastronomic gratification: meals on the go. And to have his meal on the go, where else does the time-crunched techie or the tuition-tired teen go, but to the nearest burger show.
Party platter
If the meal on the go is something the cuisine conservatives find hard to digest, liberalised India's birthday platters are another (p)ill the Puri-sts of the Palate might find hard to swallow. For, even the party platter has not escaped colonisation by the global cuisine as it piles on more of high-end pizzas 'n' pastas than poor old papris and papads, and more of assembly-line French fries than home-assembled fried pakodas.
Happy meals have done to the conventional birthday thali what the Barbie has done to traditional toys.And while the global food brands have travelled to India to give us a quick bite of foreign flavours, be it Barista's Italian coffee lavazza, Pizza Hut's Chicken Italia or Yo! China's schezwan dim sums, the globe-trotting desi has also brought in cross-continental cuisines to cosmopolitan India in the form of specialty restaurants and eateries.
If Indian spices have been travelling to American kitchens, thanks to the likes of celebrity chef Vikas Khanna, whose star-anise flavoured crab cakes and rose-infused rice, inspired by the Himalayan theme, made it to US President Obama's fundraising dinner at the Rubin Museum of Art recently, so have European and Oriental flavours been making a foray into Indian rasois and restaurants, courtesy connoisseurs of continental cuisines.
Be it a Ritu Dalmia, whose signature specialty Italian restaurant Diva has become a landmark on the discerning desi's food-scape, a metaphor for India Dining's taste of the liberalisation of the Mera Bharat Mahaan Menu, or a Sanjeev Kapoor of the "Khana Khazana" fame who has recently been travelling to Copenhagen to bring back Nordic flavours as part of his "Fusion Journey", the aromas of appetisers from abroad are wafting in thick and fast with the Travelling Titans of Taste Buds.
Foreign influence
The liberalisation of the larder has brought in foreign flavours not only to the tables, but also to the shelves of supermarkets, and from there to the cabinets of the Indian rasois. From Swiss cheeses to Italian herbs to Irish creams and British cereals, there's a whole world winding its way into the upmarket Indian's shopping trolley, and to the tetra-pack-studded shelves of supermarkets that are giving the nukkad kirana shops a run for their money.
The multi-cuisine experience of the Indian foodie has thus grown beyond the cross-country flavours into a panoramic platter that partakes of sushi and sashimi with as much relish as it does Thai curry. Mexican is as much on the gourmet's menu as is Lebanese.
If Bengaluru has a Shiro or a Zen to dish out Japanese to the techies' travel-tempered taste buds, Mumbai has a Marrakesh or a Morokko to spread out Mexican or Lebanese for the financial capital's elitist epicures, and the country's Capital has an Olive Bar to bring a slice of Italy to the palates of the power hungry or the plain hungry.
If travel and media exposure have done their bit for the proliferation of foreign flavours, so has the mad ad world of that juicy jingle that has the knack of popping up on your television screen the moment you're about to pop in your mouth anything that is decidedly desi in taste.
Just as a junk-antagonistic mum is thinking up a nutritious menu to feed her tiny tots' tummies, there trills a television tagline timed to wean away real primetime appetites to all things junk: "I'm lovin' it!"
Just as health-conscious parents are dishing out drab dal-roti on the table, there jibes a jingle on the tube trying to entice tiny tots to more global gastronomic choices by scoffing at home-made compulsions: "Ab lagega roz ka khana boring!"
And when this brand-building blitzkrieg has famous faces to sell you all things yummy, from soups and pastas to candies and colas, it takes little to be converted to an Oscar Wilde-esque outlook: resist anything but temptation. When a Kareena or a Kajol cajole, through commercials with culinary catchphrases for soups like "thoda khayo thoda piyo", there's little that the puri-ist parent can do to help the tiny taste storm from brewing in the soup bowl.
In this age of cacophonous commercials, the desi Puri-st of the Palate does try to hold his or her own against the belligerently market-savvy global drone. But for every winning, there is a weaning. For every mouth owing allegiance to the parantha or uthapam, there is a weaned away mouth watering at an ad of Meatzaa pizza.
Going glocal
And one reason Parantha & Co are facing a stiff challenge from Pizza Unlimited, especially as far as the appetites attached to tiny or teeny tummies go, is that the global giants have gone glocal. Be it the American or British burger biggies or other foreign fast food majors, the name of the footfall-grabbing game is: glocalisation. To beat the parantha, stuffed or stuffy, on its home turf, the Italian pizza has given itself an Indian makeover: Keema Do Pyaza, Paneer Makhani or a Kadai Chicken. That's surely the stuff that makeovers are made of!
To capture a bite of the Indian retail pie, the American burger has shed its blandness as well as its beef to embrace a spicier and saucier image. Quite like a staid blonde turning a sexy auburn for a cameo in a Bollywood or Tollywood blockbuster!
So, all this globalisation or glocalisation of the global thali virtually makes the American Bread Consuming Desi into an American Bread Confused Desi!
Knowing that the glocalising of the bread is a matter of bread and butter for the global food majors is one thing, but knowing the American bread from the Danish dough and knowing the penne from the pasta is quite another. India Dining may love the liberalisation of the thali, but it may need more than a sushi or a sashimi to grow into India Discerning.
Such is India Dining's fetish for foreign food brands that, much like the faux fashion flooding flea markets, there's faux global cuisine being dished out in Indian food streets.
For that globally standardised Colonel Sander's secret recipe, there's a faux franchise churning out that time-tested formula in a confusingly similar sounding brand name. Imitation, after all, is the best form of flattery. So, never mind if in all this cuisine colonisation, there's a bit(e) of confusion. It's all for the sake of Sake!
This confusion may be a corollary of this cross-cultural cuisine-scape. This confusion may miff the conservatives of cuisine. But this confusion clearly has been given a politically correct mouthful connect by the Globalised Bharatiya Gourmet Going Places: Fusion!