NEW YORK, NEW YORK, March 24, 2004: Uvir Saran, a chef at the new Indian restaurant Amma, in Midtown, has never tasted the restaurant’s tandoor-grilled lamb chops. “My family in Delhi have been vegetarians for generations,” he said. “At least since the 15th century. Before that we are not so sure,” begins this long New York Times article. Jehangir Mehta, the pastry chef at Aix on the Upper West Side, grew up in Mumbai, where about 30 percent of the 12 million residents are vegetarian. “The vegetarian cooking of India is excellent training for a pastry chef,” he said. “It teaches you how much range can be achieved with spices and herbs.” India has the most varied vegetarian cooking in the world, and it has been thousands of years in the making. Now it is also widely available and authentically prepared in restaurants across New York City. Religion, economics, demographics and geography conspired early on to make India one of the most prolifically cultivated regions on earth, says this article. Today, there are about 220 million strict vegetarians in India, according to the Anthropological Survey of India. Indian Hindus, Buddhists and Jains all aspire to an ideal of ahimsa, or nonviolence, that prohibits the killing of anything living or with the potential for life.
Between 1990 and 2000, New York’s Indian-American population more than doubled, according to census figures. The city has also seen an explosion of Indian restaurants at every level. More than ever, New York’s Indian restaurants exist to provide desis–Hindi for countrymen–with authentic tastes of home. As New York’s South Indian population has swelled, the lighter, livelier foods of those regions are being added to the mix. Gujarat, where many of New York City’s Indian high-tech workers come from, has a particularly high percentage of vegetarians. “They are bachelors, these guys,” said Sridhar Rathnam, the chef and an owner of Madras Cafe in the East Village. “So they don’t know how to cook. And they need restaurants.” With the arrival here of South Indian vegetarian staples like dosas and uttapams, samosa chat and idlis, Indian cooking in New York is finally reflecting how Indians eat in India. And that often means vegetarian meals at least twice a day, or an entirely vegetarian home kitchen.
Lavina Melwani, a writer in New York (and Hinduism Today correspondent) who grew up in Delhi, has been a vegetarian for 15 years and considers the changes in New York’s Indian restaurants to be remarkable. “Now in Midtown you can get a totally traditional chole batura for breakfast,” she said, referring to a spicy chickpea stew served with crisp, puffy bread, “and then have a dosa for lunch. When I moved here, there was nothing Indian vegetarians could eat, except for pizza.” For the full informative article, click on “source” above.
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