The great tandoori stir fry

Decades after the Punjabification of Chinese food in India, are the Chinese getting even with the murder of Indian food beyond the Great Wall? Business Standard follows the silk route in search of the elusive authentic experience

Manju Dalmia visited Beijing and Shanghai in the month of June. Her first stop was "" no, not the shopping malls or the Chinese Opera but Tandoor, the best-known Indian restaurant in China, with operations in both cities, as well as Chengdu.

Every year, as the number of Indian visitors to China has grown exponentially, the reticence to try the "real" Chinese experience has few takers among even die-hard non-vegetarian diners. For conservative diners such as Dalmia, the only recourse to surviving on a diet of bread, or lettuce, is the spate of "Indian" restaurants opening just as rapidly across the Great Wall.

Is there a renaissance of Indian food in China? Or is it merely pandering to Indian tastes even though the food, for most part, has been localised beyond all recognition?

Certainly, recommendations come in most handy, as in the case of Dalmia, who said: "An acquaintance who had been to Shanghai and Beijing recommended that I stick to Tandoor, so I didn't even look around for any other Indian restaurant. As a vegetarian, I needed to locate an Indian restaurant even before I set off for my holiday."

And the experience? "While the quality of food was far better than I imagined it would be, I found the menu to be full of entry-level Indian dishes, like Jalfrezi. It's what Indian menus were in London 15 years ago"; and where the result was the creation of the Chicken Tikka Masala, a hybrid "Indian" product that is now Britain's national dish!

Nitin Chawla "" who, ironically, is in the business of serving Chinese food in India "" and his bride were not as lucky. In the course of their honeymoon, they visited Shenzen and Guangzhou, and were horrified to encounter glorified dhabas masquerading as restaurants and serving samosas and yellow dal.

Many of China's lesser Indian restaurants are one-man bands, opened by entrepreneurs from non-restaurant backgrounds. Kaveen's Kitchen in Shanghai, for example, was opened by a fabric dealer when he married a Shanghainese girl.

Ashoka Restaurant, also in Shanghai, is owned by Malaysians. Indian Kitchen, with over 20 branches all over China, is staffed by south Indian chefs cooking their version of north Indian food.

So what the Chawlas got was a lesson on what it's like when "substitution" to pander to local tastes can kill off the original cuisine, as has happened with Chinese food in India.

"When we were served an unidentifiable dish, I called for the manager," says Chawla. And learnt that as fresh cream was not locally available, it was substituted by soya whip. And the food?

"Indian food," he says, aghast, "is cooked with Chinese spices and herbs."

He shouldn't have been so surprised. After all, there are thousands of Chinese restaurants in India that have stayed in operation with a bottle of synthetic vinegar and another of tomato ketchup by the wok.

If Chinese visitors are confounded by our version of their cuisine "" Gobi Manchurian, for instance "" what's to stop the Chinese from localising Indian food to suit their considerably exclusionist palates?

As a result, in both countries, the crossover has resulted not in just providing a more varied board of cuisines, but in actually creating new cuisines altogether, something purists might shudder at, although the key question should be: Has it helped extend regional repertoires?

The two Asian giants have a lot in common in their respective cuisines . There's one difference however: Chinese restaurants in India have made their presence felt for over 50 years, whereas the first Indian restaurant in China was set up a mere 14 years ago.

As a result, today, in India, we have begun to shake off the shackles of Chinese restaurants owned by third-generation immigrants, and have begun to venture into newer pastures where Chinese chefs, imported from Beijing, Sichuan and Guangdong provinces, are in charge of the kitchen. Most restaurateurs, though, privately confess that the biggest nightmare is figuring out what the guest really wants.

Says the executive chef of a five-star hotel, "I've given carte blanche to my Chinese chef to maintain authentic quality, but many guests have a problem with his version of sweet corn soup. They send back the thin soup because they've been used to the cornflour-thickened version, which is inauthentic."

Chef Thomas Xing of the Empress of China concurs. "In China, every restaurant meal begins with cold dishes. I've tried to put them on the menu here; the only problem is that they don't sell.

I do my best, which is what I'm here for, but I and the other Chinese chefs in the city" "" they have a close network and meet every week "" "get depressed at the number of orders for Chilli Chicken and Chicken Manchurian".

Sanjeev Goswami of The Tandoor in China and The Chinese in New Delhi has a simple solution. "We've imported three chefs because we realise that a single man cannot cook 150 dishes each day. The Chinese is 100 per cent authentic, but even we have had to take liberties. We have, on the menu, crispy spinach, because the original vegetable is simply not available and spinach is a close enough substitute. And our chefs have strict instructions: don't change the cuisine; don't provide extra sauce" "" a common request in authentic Chinese restaurants.

But then, Goswami, who has had the distinction of spending 14 years in China, setting up and running three branches of The Tandoor, has done his homework well.

"I had my experience of eating in local Chinese restaurants over 14 years, and what I would love to eat from the full gamut of the Chinese cuisine was what made the menu of The Chinese. You have to give the Indian palate something it will relish."

Like The Chinese, China Club, in another part of the city, also has three chefs, all from the Sichuan province. As none of them speak English, there's an Indian interpreter "" Sarfaraz Siddiqi, a young Chinese language student from Jawaharlal Nehru University "" who plays middle-man when the occasion arises.

Master chef Jesse Zuo Jiancai is always fazed by requests from Indian customers to do something different. He speaks through the interpreter, "The Chinese and the Indians approach their cuisines from opposite angles. Because I've worked in Sri Lanka, I have a fair idea of what sells in India. Give an Indian an authentic Sichuan dish and you risk having it sent back. Give him what you think he wants, and you are not doing your job properly."

Chef Jiancai remembers the time a guest asked him to cook him the spiciest dish he knew. However, after encountering the fiery Chonqing Chicken, the guest spluttered and begged for a bowl of plain rice to kill the blaze in his mouth. It is not commonly realised just how spicy Sichuan food can be "" it's far, far more incendiary than anything the average Indian would be able to face.

On the other hand, Tao Ying, the manageress of The Chinese, and, like Sarfaraz Siddiqi, a buffer between Indian guests and Chinese chefs, was once asked by a guest to bring the kind of dish that she herself would eat in China, but sent it back, furious that he was being fobbed off with hospital food!

When The Chinese was still on the drawing board stage, Ying would offer innumerable suggestions about what to include in the menu, but they were all shot down because "Indians would not appreciate them", she was told.

The favourite game of Chinese restaurants in the city is to claim how many Chinese nationals eat there. The other favourite game is to shoot down competitors' claims.

Thus, when Baba Ling of Nanking waxes eloquent about how his dim sum chefs from Guangdong have made the restaurant the rage among the embassies of South-east Asia, competitors curl their lips derisively and claim that Singaporeans and Koreans don't count. And at the rate Chinese embassy officials and Air China and Chinese Eastern Airlines top brass are supposed to dine out, the wonder is that they ever get the time to visit their offices!

On the other side of the Great Wall, all Indian high commission officials patronise The Tandoor, but that is partly because of the lack of any other option. At the other Indian restaurants it is not uncommon to find fried karipatta leaves in Dal Makhni, and fried mustard seeds in Butter Chicken.

Goswami of The Tandoor has personally encountered Indian restaurants that keep a few pairs of chopsticks for those of his clients who "simply can't manage Western cutlery".

And in defence of his "entry level menu", he is firm that his customers are first Chinese, then Westerners and, finally, Indians who "form less than 5 per cent of the total diners".

Goswami, a passionate foodie, is toying with the idea of introducing a never-before concept of Chinese food in India shortly. Will it do well? "It's time to push the envelope," he replies, and adds hastily, "Of course the menu will be put together with care."

Finally, the big question is, how much is too much? Is it justifiable to serve Indian food with soya whip and Chinese herbs? Or Tandoori Chicken with a side portion of Stir-fried Okra?

Is it pardonable to employ a Chinese national to serve Chicken Manchurian, something no Chinese has ever tasted outside of India? Is it possible that two of the world's greatest cuisines, for reasons of instant profit, are being given short shrift in each other's countries?

THE GREAT APPELATIONS

There's the Imperial cuisine of Beijing, roughly analogous to our very own Mughlai. Unlike in India, where everybody and his uncle add a dollop of cream to Punjabi food and call it Mughlai, Beijing takes its Imperial cuisine very seriously. State-run restaurants that serve the famous 108-dish banquet, spread over three days, are catered to by descendants of the royal chefs of yore.

The Big Four of Chinese cuisine "" Sichuan, Shantung, Hua Yin and Cantonese "" are further divided into Hunan, Hubei, Beijing and Shanghai, these eight then regionalising into 16 distinctive sub-cuisines.

Thus, only in Shanghai will you get pork braised in sweet soy sauce, while only Guangdong does corn kernels and pine nuts in oyster sauce. But when the full glory of Chinese food filters down to India, what do you get? Paneer with hot garlic sauce?

The parallels with Indian cuisine aren't hard to see. Even with its 30-odd cuisines, Indian food is immediately identifiable to the Chinese, but the ingredients and cooking methods differ markedly. Our biggest export is north Indian/Mughlai. Theirs is Cantonese and Sichuan.

THE LOCALISATION FACTOR

We Indians love our spicy food, so Cantonese dishes get spiked with green and dry red chillies. We baulk at things like fermented bean curd and duck's blood, so that's out. The Chinese have a lactose intolerance, which means no kadhi on the menu, but chicken tikka has a parallel in Xinjiang cuisine.

Says Nitin Chawla, restaurateur, "The temptation to substitute Sichuan peppers with red chillies at a hundredth of the cost is considerable." Sanjeev Goswami imports his Indian ingredients for The Tandoor in China "so we are forced to charge even for papad".

Using soya cream instead of fresh cream is a small step. Juxtapose Sichuan peppers instead of dry red chillies, and you've suddenly developed a different cuisine altogether.

THE BUCK STOPS HERE

Owners of restaurants are in the game for the profit. Changing the public's taste and educating palates doesn't figure anywhere near the top of their priorities.

Chefs tend to be highly-strung craftsmen: the more dishes that are sent back to the kitchen, the more they resolve to take the line of least resistance.

The customer is king. It is he who pays and if he pleases to have a Chinese chef cook Pork Vindaloo with fragrant vinegar and Shaoxing wine, so be it.

Servers in restaurants suggest strange combinations of food "" Noodles with Hot Garlic Sauce to go with Chicken Manchurian, for example...or Chana Masala with Biryani.