If you’re looking for a friendly, high end Indian restaurant with great atmosphere, it helps to do your research. You need to see what restaurants there are in the area you live. You also need to set a criteria of sorts too to make sure you book the right venue too. It is key in any case also to ensure reservation is made for the correct restaurant. This is so you know you will eat the right food you have in mind.
The food served differs across the country
Indian food, not unlike any other country’s national food scene, is a vast constellation of culinary influences and traditions from all over the country. From region to region, you will see a different option on the menus for the end user. You will see different dishes all using their own distinctive spices. The is the same case also in the Indian restaurant offerings there are too.
Indian cuisine throughout the nation is highly dependent on curries, which are gravy-like sauce or stew-like dishes with meat, vegetables, or cheese. There is also a good number of dishes too which contain fish. They consider food and drink to nourish the spirit as well as the body; food in India is integral to spiritual advancement, it is joy and celebration. The Indian kitchen varies significantly from south to north and east to west, with the southern and western Indian cuisines leading the way of vegetarian Indian food as most Westerners have come to know and love it.
The varying influences
It in the north and northeast, the Muslim influence of the Mughals with its meaty traditions can still be felt, as well as the glowing Tandoor of Punjab. Despite an immense fruit and vegetable variety in a land as large as Alaska, Texas and California combined (the three largest states in the USA), the core of any Indian meal is grain. Rice in the south and wheat in the form of roti or naan (bread) in the north. They both are eaten with daal (lentils or pulses).
Beyond that, the diversity of Indian food is limited only by a cook’s circumstances and imagination. Rest assured, every Indian cook will be a master of spices, treating each spice individually before combining them into various masalas (spice blends). Indians love their food as much as foreigners do. Three meals a day is standard. Although in some parts of the country are so poor that they can barely afford one. More than 400 million Indians out of the 1.2 billion strong population live on under $1.25 per day. Yet, whoever can, will celebrate their three main meals. They will also stick as many tiffins (snacks) into the daily diet. This will be done without sabotaging their appetite.
Modern Indian cuisine – what you need to know
Modern Indian culinary practices have their roots in Ayurveda, the ancient science of life, health and longevity. Ayurveda classifies foods according to their positive and negative energies as well as their medicinal qualities. Developed by the Aryans in the second millennium BC, it is still the most widely practiced form of medicine in India. The underlying idea of ‘you are what you eat – you eat according to what you are’ follows the basic principle that one cannot maintain a healthy body with unsuitable food. It is worth nothing that all this has not stopped fast food chains from developing a stronghold. This has been the case in India’s megacities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta. The average Indian will always turn to home-cooked food and an ayurvedic practitioner around the corner before anything else.
Overall, what you need to know
Before anyone dives into the Indian food at an Indian restaurant, they should be reminded of Indian table and eating etiquette. In rural India, food is still eaten with the right hand (the left is associated with bathroom business). This is although the use of cutlery is prevalent in urban areas in North India. Flatbreads (chapati, roti, naan) who are particularly popular in that area. They are served with every meal and help to gather food and sop up gravies and curries. Only the fingertips are used for eating, and although India has a reputation as a bacterial haven, Indians are quite obsessive about washing hands before and after meals. In South India, banana leaves are still used in the same function as spoons, especially for soupy and very liquid food.
