'Van' Chinese goes global

Indians may be developing a taste for authentic cuisines, but "Indian Chinese" is now taking off globally.

At the Danforth Dragon in Toronto, the menu is fairly routine "" zeera beef meets "dragon" lollipops meets "tandoori pakoras", chicken balls spiced up with cumin, and you are unlikely to find any steamed rice here; just platefuls of fried rice to go with, perhaps, some squiggly eggplant in blackbean sauce.

The menu is an unabashed hit and not just with the expat community from Ludhiana bingeing out on nostalgia. The latter does form a substantial portion of the clientele, but there are many other fans of the cuisine too that we in India have for years dismissed as "Punjabi-Chinese" in Delhi, or "kothimbir-infested" in Mumbai.

Move over snobs and "authentication" seekers. Indian-Chinese is a legit cuisine not just in neighbourhood halwai shops or dhabas in India but globally. Danforth Dragon is not alone, a score of officially Indian-Chinese eateries are now springing up everywhere from north America to the middle-east and south-east Asia and even Europe, in cities with admittedly large Indian-origin populations but by no means limited to these.

Mumbai-restaurateur Nelson Wang, the man credited with invented the manchurian (we'll come back to that story in just a bit for all those who haven't heard it yet) in 1975 and thus kicking off the Indian-Chinese revolution in the country, says: "This is one cuisine without a land. According to our survey, there are three (restaurants) in Vancouver, three in Toronto, two in London and Bangkok, six in America, one in Germany and a restaurant that is called 'Manchrian' in Hong Kong as well."

If that sounds substantial, there are many more. You only have to click on the various blogs (like the one on the Danforth Dragon, incidentally written by a woman one-quarter Hakka) devoted to eating out and you realise that there are not only many, many other restaurants making a killing with versions of their chilli chickens but also the fact that it is not just Indians who are queuing up.

Instead, many more people, whites and other Asian communities included, are experimenting with this "desi Chinese".

In fact, Indian restaurateurs and consultants are now being roped in for projects abroad "" to help open more Indian-Chinese restaurants.

Sudha Kukreja in Delhi, for instance, who owns the successful standalone Ploof and specialises in Oriental cuisine, says she has done a project each in Singapore and Canada and talks are underway for another one in Bali. Kukreja has quite a logical explanation for the cuisine's popularity in north America.

"The Americans have always liked ketchup", she says, "the taste of oil and ketchup together, as in fries and burgers".

While Indian-Chinese offerings are usually deep-fried with dollops of tomato sauce, the ratio of chilli paste and tomato sauce used in India is apparently reversed for the same recipes in the US to cater to the American palate, Kukreja reasons.

Then, there is the urge to experiment. After going through the whole cycle of "authentication" "" Cantonese cuisine, for instance "" the latest fad in many capitals of the world seems to be Chinese-fusion.

A duck with orange sauce then, not prepared French style, but marinated in, say, five spice powder and with a hint of chilli flakes in the sauce, and maybe a garnish of dhania patta, India being so fashionable of late, is the stuff of fads. And there are restaurants in Hong Kong and Singapore which are now doing this kind of a fusion, including serving the dishes pre-plated like in fine-dining European restaurants. (The buzz is that ITC Maurya Sheraton in New Delhi is all set to open a similar "Chinese-fusion" restaurant soon.)

Anjan Chatterjee, owner of Mainland China, the country's largest chain of restaurants, credits this popularity to the cuisine's adaptability. "You have the main ingredient which is like a pasta and you can even change the cooking medium; in Kolkata, families use mustard oil while in Kerala, home-made Chinese often has coconut oil."

But let's get this straight: Indian Chinese, or Chinese Chinese for that matter, is hardly haute dining. The current popularity of the cuisine is obviously being fuelled by nostalgia. Nostalgia for a time when to dine on veg manchurian, a dish, like we said is credited to Nelson Wang who invented it while working as a cook at the Mumbai cricket club.

"Indians liked curry, so I used ginger, garlic and chilli which usually go into a curry, and instead of garam masala, put soy sauce and corn flour for thickening," Wang remembers.

With many a global Indian hungry for the sweet corn soup or chilli chicken of their early youth, it was time enterprising NRIs thought of this little scheme "" apparently one Sikh gentleman in New York has made a lot of name and money by way of what our own critics call "Sino-Ludhiana".

In India, on the other hand, the cycle is reversed. If the West has had their fill of authentic Cantonese or Peking cuisines, India is just getting used to it.

"In India we are graduating from the rubbish to the authentic, while the west is going the other way," Chatterjee says, echoing many similar views in the country. Sure, but if "van" Chinese has earned global respectability, that's not such a bad thing either.

THE HAKKA INFLUENCE

Indian-Chinese has its origins in the food cooked by the Chinese of Calcutta (Tangra still has the only Chinatown in India) and Mumbai.

These immigrants were ethnically Hakka, an ethnic group of the Han Chinese who first settled in northeast China, known as Manchuria (later invaded by Japan).

Since the time of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, the Hakkas, as they were called by locals, have been migrating to southeast Chia and then Malaysia, India and Pakistan, east Africa, America and even the Caribbean.