Success In the Indian Eatery

By Vincent Gabriel

The author focusses on the delights of the food to be offered to the customer.

"Indian" food is meant to excite the senses, as it is colourful, it is tasty and making it is a joy. To the food entrepreneur indian food causes so much joy to you that I have included Unit 13 because I am afraid that the joy will carry you to beyond the limits to sheer exhaustion and a sense that you or your food is not fully appreciated.

So you need to be on guard against those who only choose one aspect and push that one aspect to its ultimate end. I am referring to those who misinterpret Indian food as being chilli hot. The truth is that chilli is just one aspect of that food. Other interpretations may include the slowness of the cooking. Another aspect of Indian food is to provide a large variety of fresh food from fish to vegetables to meat and to fruit.

All Indian food is about communal and personal enjoyment.

Keep up the good work of spreading the sensual joy of Indian food to the far flung corners of the world.

I wish you every success in your endeavours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456623678

Book preview

Eatery

Unit 1

Where is india?

Synopsis

At the end of this unit, you will be able to appreciate the problems of trying to put together all the various combinations of the food consumed by people who regard themselves as being from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and their diaspora scattered all over the world.

To be able to put together this manual that is meant to be a practical how to the author has to take liberties with the definitions and refine the whole situation as "indian".

Introduction

To answer the question "what is india?"

india

india embodies all the pleasant and happy experiences in the enjoyment of food related to the geographical Indian sub-continent.

Source: The Author

What is this book for?

Table 1.1 List the indian food as being arranged by

and the purpose of this book is to help you, understand the dynamics of producing and selling this indian food.

TABLE 1.1 List of indian food

To help in gathering the flavour of indian food a tutorial is attached to each of the 13 units. The objective is to provide an insight into a particular item that adds to the experience of preparing food and serving that food to customers.

You have to know how it tastes before you can cook it quoted by

Huma Yusuf

New York Times

Copyright acknowledged

The view is that Indian food can only be prepared by someone who is of Indian origin.

This is the commonly held view for

Authentic regional food, using the special spices and ingredients of the area. Most of these spices are not commercially available.

An example is the preparation of a curry using the meat of a wild boar. Wild boar is not sold commercially and most governments do not allow the export of wild boar meat for mass public consumption.

Preparation of food based on family or heritage or signature recipes. These are groups that depend on the unique qualities of the food sold and hence are unlikely to reveal their secret, be they in:

–   Ingredients used

–   Blending techniques

–   Way of preparing the food

–   The time spent in the actual cooking process

–   Providing the dining experience to the guest

On the other side, there is an argument for being practical in commercial mass cooking:

The need to keep a dish at a taste level that is acceptable to the target customer. In some parts of India really hot and spicy curries are available but these are not practical to the taste to the average diner who may eat curry only once or twice a year and does not want to burn his taste buds. He might enjoy a mild, stimulating sensation of spice but nothing more.

The need to keep a dish at a cost level that is reflected in menu prices. Every customer has, in his mind, an idea of what price to pay. As a seller you have to recover all your costs – the indirect and fixed, the variable and you have to be able to turn up a profit for every dish you sell.

The need to maintain a certain level of consistency in food taste and in the costs of production. You may want to employ a certain team of cooks who can produce great tasting dishes for some customers. Then they leave your employ and you solve that vacancy by employing another team of cooks, who have an altogether different style of cooking.

Customers get confused. Some do not like the new taste and they leave to buy their indian food else. In the meantime the group of customers, who left when the earlier batch of cooks were around, might never come back. You are faced with a situation where you have lost two batches of customers.

Others feel that once in Europe, the USA or Japan it is actually what the customer wants that dictates the menu.

So in indian eateries in European cities, sausages are served. In some German indian eateries, the curry sausage is the most popular item.

In Penang (Malaysia) there is a local curry dish that uses pork as the meat and the mild curry is eaten with bread.

In London it is quite common to see on the menu humus and doner kebab both Turkish/ Middle East food being served together with the food items that the customer normally associates with indian food.

In some big cities of the USA, the following are on the menu.

STEAKS (beef - author’s word)

Served with thick potato fries and all you can eat salad

Sirloin Steak

Pepper Steak

Bonfield Steak

The Japanese serve a sweet form of gravy that they call curry and there is chicken or fish curry. (See Case Study)

The menu includes the following:

FISH GRILL

Tuna

Cod fish

Sea bass

Salmon

King Prawn

In some Australian eateries, the indian eatery had the following:

BURGERS

¼ Pounder with Cheese

½ Pounder with Cheese

Chicken Burger

Vegi Burger

Bean Burger

Fish Burger

6 pcs of Chicken Nuggets with Chips

Healthy Eating

The next trend that you have to recognise is that of healthy eating.

There are customers who want their food to be with:

Less salt

Less sugar

Less oily

No MSG

No transfats

How do you plan for such customers especially when most curries are prepared beforehand?

Yet the size of such customers is large enough for you to have to think of a way to meet their needs.

In the long run, the trend is towards healthy eating. As people get more affluent, they expect the food to reflect their needs. They want to eat well and that means they want the food to be healthy and by that they simply mean less salt, sugar, oil and not to use MSG and transfats.

The trend in indian food cooking is to offer a more subtle taste by allowing the fresh ingredients to bring out their own flavours, during the cooking process.

As an example, the cook of the famous Goanese fish curry used to cook the fish in a strong curry. This has given way to steaming the fish till it is almost cooked, and then adding the hot, steaming curry sauce on the fish and letting the sauce stay, till the fish is fully cooked. In this way the guest enjoys the fresh fish and the sourish curry. The fish now used is sea bream. When the fish was boiled in the older tradition shark meat was used.

How Far Must You Go?

This is especially true of vegetarian food. As an indian Eatery you face this issue. Table 1.2 shows that extent of vegetarian food choices.

Table 1.2 What different categories of people who describe themselves as vegetarian avoid in food

Next Generation of indian cooks

In the next units you will understand the need to train and qualify the next batch of indian cooks.

Cooking has never been a high caste occupational but thanks to the pioneering efforts of Indian cooks and their achievements abroad, cooking and food preparation have become technical jobs and cooks enjoy the reputation of TV stars.

In informal surveys carried out on the young starting a small indian food eatery the common reasons given were:

Wanting to be a business owner by starting a simple business concept and the following are in place –

Customer knows what indian food is,

The formal structure is in place;

Suppliers who supply the others can be mobilised to add one more client.

The only uncertainty is whether customers will accept the food being sold, or the prices being charged.

Another reason given:

Wanting to carry on the family legacy. Their parents have been successful enough to become financially independent. They want to push and bring the business to new levels:

More distribution with more outlets

Move into other areas of the indian food business

Move to other countries

On the other hand, the concerns voiced include:

The working environment of the kitchen - boring, hot, stuffy, dirty, slippery.

The money made. Many feel that a job as an employee offers a good starting salary, regular pay increases and even a performance bonus. In an indian food eatery the money made is dependent on the customer’s purchases. In an economic recession, takings will fall. Sometimes, the seller may have to use his own personal savings or to borrow money to keep the business afloat.

The dynamics of the situation. Food once popular can over time become less popular and fade away into history. The apom and the string hopper and the vedal are examples of indian foods that have begun to be less popular and can fade into history.

For what it is worth, the young bring in the concept of: BOSS

Bold changes

Openness to help and ideas

Systems

String of eateries

Bold changes enable them to plan the speed of the dynamics of the situation of slow decline in the business or in the industry by bringing in:

New food

Opening new markets

Using new delivery methods

Lowering prices

Bringing in new customers

Openness to change. The older generation was imprisoned to fixed routines. They never saw themselves as part of the cultural heritage. They saw themselves as a provider of rice and curry.

Systems. The older vendor had set ways of doing things, that they considered trade secrets. The new comers use systems to bring food to the table.

There is the menu.

There is a purchasing system based on what is to be sold.

There is a storage system to keep food safe and fresh.

There is a preparation system to deliver to each customer the food within three to ten minutes of an order.

String of eateries. The new comers see the need for:

Economics of scale

Centralized purchasing and storage

A standard way of training the kitchen help

A standard way of growing the customer base to a string of eateries.

indian food is universal food.

indian eateries are formal in every big city in North America, Europe, prosperous Asia and Australia

Accommodating indian Food

In the succeeding units, you will learn how indian foods have had its horizons widened by being brought to Europe, North America, to ASEAN, Japan and China.

However all indian food innovators keep the iron rule - TRACK.

1.   Keep the Traditional taste.

2.   Eaten with RICE in the south and bread in the North

3.   Affordable. Indian food has to be sold at three levels:

For all at the most affordable price,

For the middle group at prices they will pay

And for the rich, with the food that they want to buy.

4.   Cooking process according to