this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Asklemmy
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Can you give an example? I know that some people have a hard time with the strong smells, but I honestly have never heard it made fun of in any demeaning way. Maybe at worst a character has a bad time on a toilet due to the Indian food being so spicy, but I can't think of how it would be made fun of. Seems well loved here in the States in my experience.
I thought you meant for Indian food being praised worldwide at first...
Most people I know that enjoy Indian food switched to Thai prerty quickly. They might still get Indian occasionally, but Thai food does everything better.
Most Indian dishes that are popular in other countries, aren't even Indian. At most they were invented in other countries and portrayed as authentic. So I'm not even sure that counts.
Kind of like how General Tsao's chicken is an American dish
Such an odd way to hear people talk about food.
I’d never consider food to be “switchable”, let alone think another culture does it “better”. Like there’s so much diversity between Indian/Thai, on a dish by dish basis no country is better.
I mean, I can't think of another type of curry that's popular in America...
Like sure, if you're in a huge city there might be one or two other options.
I'm honestly at a loss how someone wouldn't be able to understand that...
Not sure I understand why you think a Thai restaurant would be making Indian food or vice versa.
Obviously they're not making the same dishes, but that's like insisting no one can prefer clam chowder to tomato soup because it's not the same dish
I think the point is they are very different cuisines, not interchangeable. They both just happen to be spicier than the American palate is used to.
I don't choose food based on country of origin but what I fancy to eat. Sometimes that's Indian foods sometimes thai, sometimes vietnamese etc.
I live in Australia where there is not a great selection of Indian food (despite a relatively high Indian population) compared to the UK where I also lived. Even so, there are different styles of Indian food with different dishes available just in my suburb. It's nothing like Thai food, which also has a large variety. Both Indian and Thai restaurants have a few dishes that are 'classic' and available at most mainstream restaurants. Like, it would be odd to not have Pad Thai available, or in an Indian, butter chicken.
Sometimes I'll want a pad Thai. Sometimes a butter chicken. The pad Thai is not better than the butter chicken. A green curry is not better than a jalfrezi. They are different flavour profiles.
I would say there is more crossover between dishes from Vietnam, Thailand malaysia and China, with varying levels of spice and flavour but very similar dishes available and common.
Again, you might prefer a Vietnamese sweet and sour chicken, but that doesn't mean Cantonese or Hong Kong style is better or worse.
I mean...
Yeah, if I compared a pizza to a bowl of ice cream they'd be pretty different...
But curry is pretty much the only popular Indian food worldwide, everything else was invented in those other countries, it's not really from India. Or like butter chicken was invented by a foreigner who moved to India.
If a dish is invented in a foreign country to appeal to the taste of foreigners...
It's really hard to attribute it to the country of origin, or the country of invention. It's literally Taco Bell. Often it takes the country it's portrayed as from for a long ass time to even hear about it.
Like, I forget which one but maybe it's chicken Alfredo? Some dish that is sold in Italian restaurants in other countries for so long, and tourists wouldn't stop asking for it in Italy, that now it's actually in Italian restaurants just to keep tourists happy
But back to curry, most people I know like curry, but prefer Thai to Indian.
Which is all I said, but apparently I did a very bad job of saying it if so many of you didn't get it.
Lol, there are many different types of curry. That's like saying noodles. It encompasses Italian, Thai, Japanese, Korean...
Yes, food doesn't have boundaries and fusion food can be great. Your point about people graduating from Indian to Thai still doesn't make sense in that context.
You can also take the opposite and look at fortune cookies. Invented by immigrants and now associated with Chinese food. Is that any different to a foreign person creating a recipe in China with Chinese ingredients, or a French person in the UK using Chinese cooking techniques.
Is tempura less Japanese because the batter originated with Portuguese traders?
Seriously...
Why am I getting so many replies the last few days, where someone tells me what I've been saying, but they're super smug about it and act like I didn't know?
It's super weird that it started happening all of a sudden, and all over lemmy
You are totally ignorant to how odd and out of place your comments seem to people reading them. You came in with a strange non sequitur that wasn't really relevant to the discussion at all, then got all weird when people engaged you on it, like your version of whatever was going on here didn't happen.
You are the odd one out here! It was fun to read tho.
A reply I got from him on a thread below just read like trump wrote it, and then goes on to say that he “literally just said” what I then replied. I’m like mf where??
If you meet an asshole on the way to work, then you met an asshole. If everyone you meet all day is an ass, the problem is likely with you!
Indian curry is a gravy while Thai curry is a soup and the flavor profiles of their curries largely have no overlap.
They both are amazing.
Butter chicken was invented for the British (in India), but naan bread and the various dal dishes are authentic, and those are the first things I think of. Thai food is good too, but it's different.
Yeah...
But that was invented by people from Pakistan who were just living in India...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_chicken
So its still a stretch to call it Indian food.
And naan is from Iran...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naan
Muslims brought it to India when they conquered it.
It's like saying a Big Mac is authentic Native American food
Gee, how far back does it have to go to be authentic? Tomatoes weren't in Italy until after Columbus brought them (of course after 1300), and didn't catch on until well after the later date mentioned of 1700, so there goes all of Italy's most famous dishes.
Hamburgers are American food. Not Native American food, but American. Next you're going to tell me baguettes are Middle Eastern food because grain was domesticated there, or that camel meat is Native American food because they evolved in America before crossing the land bridge in pre-human times.
Mate, naan wasn't invented in India...
It just wasn't.
It's Iranian food.
The only reason naan is in India, is one of the many people who conquered that area brought it there.
You can say it's popular there, but it's still not Indian food. Just a dish that's popular in India.
And I have zero idea what the tomatoes rant was about...
Italians got a new ingredient and incorporated it into existing dishes or made completely new ones. It's not like someone shiped spaghetti sauce to Italy and Italians just decided they should claim they invented it like you're doing with naan.
Or that someone from another country moved there and showed everyone how to make it like Butter Chicken.
They're just not comparable examples...
Yeah, tandoori naan is apparently popular across neighboring countries too. I'd say India can still claim some co-ownership, just like Europeans and their various loaf breads, but I guess that's a matter of definition, so sure, it's not exclusively Indian.
The dal dishes are Indian, though. Curries in general are Indian - that one goes all the way back to Harrapa IIRC. Since you seem intent on keeping score, that's 2 to 1.
A tandor is just a type of oven champ...
It makes a difference for some stuff, but not naan.
Yes... Which is what I was talking about Thai doing it better...
Why are you talking about scores?
Is you just now understanding my first comment a point for me or you?
Honestly, if we're keeping score I think we should both get a point for that. I legitimately had given up on trying and wasn't going to reply again, but then I saw you got it!
According to your source
The word Naan originates from Iran.
Anyway you might as well try to make the case that any Indian dish that contains tomatoes, potatoes, chillies, squash, and much else isn't really Indian because they didn't exist there until a few hundred years ago.
I think after a cuisine or manner of cooking has been used in a region for almost a thousand years we are free to say it is authentic to that region, even though it was introduced. That you would deny Indians that, while accepting that Thai cuisine only started using chilli peppers in the last 300 years, opens a broader discussion about your personal understanding of culture and ethnicity.
Further, a Big Mac is a product made by a single corporation, lmao. I’m not going to justify that with further argument. But to use your Naitive American angle; a big part of NA cuisine is a bread called ‘bannock’. It can be savoury or sweet, and every tribe cooks it a little different from every other tribe. It is an important part of Indegenous cooking… and it’s an introduced food. The word bannock isn’t even from any native word. It came about from Scottish settlers/workers surviving on meagre company rations of flour and oil in isolated regions where they had no idea how to get food from the land. First Nations were introduced to it then found themselves in a similar situation as they were pushed off their land and given flour rations by the government so they wouldn’t all die. This all happened so recently my grandparents knew people affected by this.
It’s integral to their culture, even, and anyone who would deny bannock isn’t naitive would rightly be called an idiot by any indigenous person I know. Even though it’s an introduced food. That’s how culture, and food, work.
Not really...
Because one is an ingredient, and one is a a cooked item that someone mentioned as a food that was invented in India.
Those seem like two very different types of things.
But I don't know why you want for chili peppers instead of just curry.
Curry was invented in India, but me and most people I know think Thai curry is better. Which is literally what I said in the beginning...
What is even going on in this thread?
Why do so many people that know nothing about this care so much?
Is it just because India is the topic?
No one made mention of anything being ‘invented’ anywhere until you, just now. I think I’d like to quote from one of history’s true greatest food scholars when I say, “What is even going on in this thread?”
I’m outta here.
That's what it is...
When OP said "Indian food" you took it as any food that's sold in India, regardless of where it originated
So like, if there's a taco bell, then tacos are Indian.
If there's spaghetti, then spaghetti is Indian.
I'd think that would also mean all those people "worldwide" aren't eating Indian food either then. They're eating the food of whatever country theyre in. Do you think Uber Eats has spaceships? Is that what ufos really are?
Good night, thanks for sticking around long enough I could start to understand what you were talking about. That shit was a trip.
Pakistan was part of India until 1947. These guys ended up on the Pakistan side of the partition, and then returned to India as refugees.
I'm not sure that it's fair to say that they weren't Indian.
That's always how ethnic food works though. It always starts with the original base food then gets modified by the local culture to fit their tastes and available ingredients. Chinese is the same. American Chinese food isn't the same as Indian Chinese food which isn't the same as French Chinese food. American Thai food isn't 100% authentic either, it's just different than Indian food because it's not based on Indian food.
Sooooo...
If it's all different, then it's not the same.
And if it's not the same, it's not a single thing "praised worldwide".
It's impressive how long people keep commenting on this thread, but still super weird y'all keep agreeing with me but acting like you're explaining what I said to me.