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The roots of Japan's Indian curry

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Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#71

Post by techaqua »

anuraj wrote: post #46

"Now to be clear, India has no such dish as a curry. No self-respecting Indian restaurant has a "curry" on their menu. They would have a Palak Paneer or a Malai Kofta or a Murgh Makhani - all of which we lump into "curry" - but no "curry" - This is patently wrong. Curry is a South Indian word referring to vegetables originally (Malakkarry means vegetables). Come to Kerala - you have Moru Curry (Butter Milk Curry) , E…

website is called "one-from-nippon"

op's name is japanese

> The author is a North Indian oblivious of curry history.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#72

Post by sthatipamala »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #39
Brajeshwar wrote: post #28

I'm not much into food. I'm kinda the "I eat because I have to." My disclaimer is that I'm not an expert but here are a few interesting stories that might be relevant to this story. I come from a place where there is a huge influence of the Japanese and grew up in folklores punctuated with Japanese stories. I got to know a tad more, when one of my school-friend took a keen interest in digging up British and Japanese…

> Also, most Indian Restaurants in India, if not owned, are pretty much run (cooks, etc.) by Nepalese. Really? There must be some odd social dynamics behind that because it sounds so implausible going from demographics alone.

Immigration. India is a bigger economy than Nepal and Nepalese come there to do work like this.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#73

Post by danans »

n1b0m wrote: post #38
Brajeshwar wrote: post #28

I'm not much into food. I'm kinda the "I eat because I have to." My disclaimer is that I'm not an expert but here are a few interesting stories that might be relevant to this story. I come from a place where there is a huge influence of the Japanese and grew up in folklores punctuated with Japanese stories. I got to know a tad more, when one of my school-friend took a keen interest in digging up British and Japanese…

Interestingly, most “Indian” restaurants in the UK are run by Bengalis

Indian when referring to the cuisine doesn't really refer to the political entity of modern India. Most of those restaurants serve a version of Punjabi food anyways.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#74

Post by sandGorgon »

this is a beautiful story, thank you for writing it.

Curry is much like India - you believe in it, thats why it exists. And you will curry controversy no matter what you write ;)

also, in case you didnt know - Ras Behari Bose and Subhash Chandra Bose are the most mysterious of Indian freedom fighters. With the exact history unknown to this day. Ras Behari Bose created the INA and adopted the resolution that made Subhash Chandra Bose as the leader, while he was living in Japan.

Even today, the Indian parliament is rocked with demands that the "secret files" be opened. The Netaji papers were recently declassified - https://nationalarchives.nic.in/content/netaji-papers - but the papers are not complete.

Japan has consistently REFUSED to declassify some of the Bose files (https://thewire.in/history/japan-netaji-death-files)

So you see, the Japanese curry is far far more mysterious than you think !

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#75

Post by nerdponx »

rayiner wrote: post #35
Brajeshwar wrote: post #28

I'm not much into food. I'm kinda the "I eat because I have to." My disclaimer is that I'm not an expert but here are a few interesting stories that might be relevant to this story. I come from a place where there is a huge influence of the Japanese and grew up in folklores punctuated with Japanese stories. I got to know a tad more, when one of my school-friend took a keen interest in digging up British and Japanese…

> Also, most Indian Restaurants in India, if not owned, are pretty much run (cooks, etc.) by Nepalese. And most "Chinese" restaurants by Bengalis. Of course, the "Chinese" food in India are, well, very very Indian-ised. A great many Indian restaurants in the US are also owned by Bengalis. I visited a Bangladeshi restaurant in Atlanta that was advertised as such. The owner mentioned that most of the Indian restaurants…

I used to live above a very conventional Indian restaurant in New York, and once in conversation the owner mentioned to me that he was from Bangladesh. I asked him if were any interesting special dishes from Bangladesh that we don't normally see on Indian restaurant menus in America, and he just shrugged and said something to the effect of "meh, it's all the same anyway." I thought that was kind of interesting. The food also wasn't particularly good, so maybe he just isn't really a food guy and came into owning the business somehow other than a passion for the culinary arts.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#76

Post by j45 »

snowman5678 wrote: post #14
hans0l074 wrote: post #12

Interestingly, the Nepali entrepreneurs also run a lot of restaurants here in Finland - along side Indian ones. Though I feel that there are more Nepalese ones. The cuisine is almost indistinguishable from North Indian cuisine, and I have heard from some folks who have visited Nepal, that authentic dishes from Nepal are missing from these restaurants. Though I suspect that might not entirely be true.

Interesting! I wonder how much of the indistinguishabilty is just them catering to their audience looking for North Indian recipes. There are definitely a lot of Nepali recipes that are very far from Indian cuisine.

North Indian cuisine is more established globally because North Indians were either forced to seek economic opportunity abroad. It wasn’t then alone, but the numbers in many areas of the world make it clear off the early waves to the Middle East, Africa, England, canada, the us, and beyond.

Partition uprooted and scattered many families from the generally 1900’s Indian subcontinent across the world in waves.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#77

Post by j45 »

dagmx wrote: post #57
unmole wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only use of the word curry in restaurants is to appeal to British nationals (and anyone they spread their culture to). So, the Curry Points that dot Hyderabad are artefacts of British colonialism? > The generalization into “curry” was one of colonial misinterpretation. Yeah, no. The Telugu kura which is obviously cognate with kari is used to mean, well curry . How about you tone down the misinterpretation and f…

Telugu Kari doesn’t mean curry in the sense that British people understand it. Please actually look up the history of what kari is. The use of curry in Indian restaurants in Hyderabad are an artifact of colonialism. Hyderabad in particular caters a lot to foreign nationals due to the proliferation of the tech sector there. Anyway What curry dishes are they serving there? “Hyderabadi chicken curry”? What is it called…

Probably just chicken something. Well said.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#78

Post by j45 »

jmillikin wrote: post #11
kizunajp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was making the claim that if you went to a restaurant in India, you wouldn't normally find any menu item called "curry", because curry is a genre of foods and not one single item in Indian cuisine.

This might be a language barrier issue, but I have never seen an Indian-style restaurant advertise a dish as "curry" in any country I've visited. Even in Japan (I live in Tokyo and have several インド料理 shops nearby), even if the shop itself has カレー in the name, the menu will say what each thing is (keema, sagh paneer, etc). Imagine sitting down and opening a menu and seeing something labelled "soup" or "sandwich"!

North Indian dishes like da saag I keens might be evolving to care less to use it. But I’d bet that’s not just North Indian Christine. Restaurant opened by todays emigrating Indians are more aware of the choices than 30-50 years ago. It was a very different world.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#79

Post by johnwalkr »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #59
sho wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spicy foods here are a) not spicy Ha. Can confirm. Lived there 2 years and while I love the food, as far as I can tell there is no food available anywhere in Japan, at all, that the average south east asian would recognise as even mildly spicy. And outside the home islands I have observed Japanese people reacting hilariously to the actually spicy local food. My favourite was a co-worker who literally collapsed to t…

That's surprising, when I get Coco Ichibanya I think level 4-6 is already fairly spicy

Yeah I was gonna say this. Coco (and also smaller competing chain gogo) is Japanese curry that you can find in every city and can be ordered extremely spicy. And it’s not by default but any of the Indian curry places will make it very spicy if you ask. I’ve also gone out of my way to look up the most authentic places for a specific dish, and been able to order something so spicy I could barely finish it.

All of that being said, mild is definitely what to expect unless you ask for spicy or go out of your way for a specific dish.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#80

Post by dfxm12 »

kizunajp wrote: post #63
whitemary wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, you failed at making that point, but now at least your intentions are understood.

I agree. Half the comments are about that one statement. You might be on to something here..

FWIW, I understood exactly what you meant on first reading.

Now to be clear, India has no such dish as a curry.

The wording "no such dish as a curry" is a little ambiguous here as to if you mean a single menu item called "curry" or items from the genre of curry. This might be were people are tripping up. However, you make yourself crystal clear with the following sentences:

No self-respecting Indian restaurant has a "curry" on their menu. They would have a Palak Paneer or a Malai Kofta or a Murgh Makhani - all of which we lump into "curry" - but no "curry".

If someone is saying you failed at making this point, I'm not sure they read the whole paragraph, or are just willfully ignoring the context and are looking for an argument.

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