“Not just paranthas: You’ll wish you had two mouths”
Tag Archive for 'food'
My all time favorite Bhel Puri place is in South Extension Market II. I always ask for extra lemon on my Bhel.
Been craving Chola Bhatura for some time. Got my fix on Sunday evening.
One of the comments was that the Bhaturas look like Marge Simpson’s ass. I think they look like her head…
I’d like to recommend a new burger chain that has come to India: Bembos. The mutton burgers are simply awesome at Bembos! There is a restaurant in Bandra, Mumbai and Noida, Delhi NCR.
Reliance Fresh is a vegetable chain owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. Its a modern food chain that offers low prices, fresh vegetables and a superior shopping experience. Its a breath of fresh air in India’s highly fragmented and obsolete retail industry. It was attacked by a Member of Parliament. Now its been asked to close in UP.
Well, first some background. The government is UP is new. The Samajwadi Party (SP) recently lost to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in a landslide. The BJP has been demolished too. So we can understand the frustration of the opposition parties. They would like to create a controversy and destabilize Mayawati’s government.
Its easy to whip up fear among the millions of poor in UP. A big corporate giant is out to exploit farmers and kill small traders. They will send all the small traders out of business with their low prices. After they have done that they will raise prices for the consumer and drop procurement prices for the farmer. All very predictable. But the sad part is the its all very untrue.
As of 2007 retail and food chains account for a vanishing fraction of total sales in India (unlike advanced economies). They do not represent a threat to the millions of small traders as a whole now and for the forseeable future. In the localities they are present, they can negatively affect the small traders. But they provide so many benefits as a whole to the economy that its certainly worth it in the long run.
I really love Japanese Food. I’m feeling quite hungry right now so I’ve posted a photo of meal I had a few months back at Akasaka Restaurant in Chennai.
Japanese food is an acquired taste like Blue Cheese 
Once you start liking it, you cant get enough of it!
Movies and Books about Fast Food
Fast Food Nation is a fictional movie about a burger chain in the US. The movie is made in a pseudo-documentary style and has many interconnected stories in it (like Crash). The movie presents the fast food business from many perspectives: the perspective of workers at a meat packing plant, of the employees in the fast food outlets and of executives in the burger chain. The most important and tragic perspective is that of animals that make up the burgers. Fast Food Nation is a deceptive movie. It starts out feeling like a comedy or a light hearted “mockumentary” but becomes serious along the way. While its not a slickly made movie, I really liked it. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Without getting too much into the story, Fast Food Nation is about corporate greed and the blind pursuit of profit. Its also about our cruelty towards animals. I’m a non-vegetarian and I felt guilty after watching the movie. This movie shows us how our insatiable desire for non-vegetarian food has spawned an extremely efficient killing machine. Animals are brought onto this earth, raised and killed so impersonally and in such sophisticated ways that it boggles the mind. We live far away from these factories and farms so we never have to see what really happens. Its almost as if the chicken on your plate and the bird were two different things! This movie takes away that distance and brings the farms and meat packing factory to our living rooms.
I don’t think I’ll give up meat just yet. But I’m now aware of the supply chain of sorrow that puts animal food on my plate. Watch the movie and learn. Modern cultures must debate the issues raise by this movie. As an Indian I felt proud that my culture has traditionally criticized the consumption of non-veg food. Indians can teach the West/Islamic world/Oriental world a thing or two on this issue.
Rating: 4/5 (3/5 for the movie, and an extra point because it made me think)
Pluses: Educational, Reasonably realistic and entertaining. Not too heavy handed on the preaching.
Minuses: Tries to attack too many themes. Felt incomplete.
Some resources
Postscript
After watching the movie I was reminded of another movie Super Size Me. It is also based on the fast food business. The movie was the 7th highest grossing documentary of all time. Needless to say, a fantastic movie!
Most interestingly, while researching the above movies I read about how a Professor of Management went undercover and worked at various fast food restaurants in the US. After working for over a year and seven of these restaurants he wrote a book. Read an article on Businessweek about it. Highly enjoyable article. It will give you a fresh perspective after all the fast food industry bashing Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me does.