Crockery cutlery article
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This document discusses whether cutlery is required when serving Indian food, particularly with silver service. It notes that Indian cuisine is traditionally eaten with the hands and fingers allow one to fully experience the food through touch and sensation. While some see eating with hands as uncivilized, the document argues that hands are God-given cutlery that allow one to truly taste Indian dishes like soft breads. It concludes that for the best experience, Indian food should be eaten with clean hands, not cutlery, whether in India or abroad.
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Crockery cutlery article
- 1. “Whether Crockery Cutlery is required for Indian Food served with Silver Service” ndian restaurants today get their revenue from the basic food coupled with the service and ambiance. These values came into being, chronologically as they are mentioned. It is obvious that people, traditionally ate out, only on compulsion, later started getting fussy about the way their food was served to them, still recently got into the appreciation of ambiance around their food and service. There can be loads spoken about food and ambiance, but an abstract service, takes a lot of help from the infrastructure of crockery, cutlery, glassware and linen often nicknamed as “CCGL” in hotel jargon. I Our British rulers used to pass a joke that “Indians are so rich, they throw away their plates after every meal”, when back home Europeans were known to be very possessive about their crystal and fine chinaware. What was actually thrown out in those days has today come back in specialty food outlets serving food the traditional way on banana leaves. The Crockery graduated from a banana leaf to copper and silver plate, to a steel plate, to EPNS as shown below at Rajdhani, to stoneware, to melamine, to bone china and fine crystal. It is a known fact that the plate gives out it’s metal properties into the food and this could be favouring the food or playing against it, as in un-tinned copper vessel poisoning. Shown here is the sample of the way we serve Indian food in Rajdhani and Aamantran outlets. A stalwart from the hotel industry said, eating food is one of those rare rituals that use up all the five senses of our species. We see, smell and hear food before it comes to actual eating, but one important thing we do before even eating is touching food, which is only possible if our "God gifted natural cutlery" in terms of our fingers are used to eat food. The Crockery, Glassware and Linen do come in that order of importance in visual appeal and undivided attention, but food has to be felt if it is to be relished in it's pure form. More so with the variety of Snacks, Sweets, and Breads and Main Courses, Indian Cookery has to offer. In our restaurant - Revival, due to the courses starting from starters, to soup, main courses and rice to salads and desserts, different sets of cutlery are used. Obviously one cannot have soup without a soupspoon, or the desserts without a dessertspoon. Wherever possible, I would personally like to request the guests to have food with their hands and enjoy every bit of the meal experience. It depends a lot upon the profile of our restaurant guests also, whether they could abolish the use of cutlery. I have observed that the bottom most strata of our society fabric cannot afford to use cutlery of any sorts. They are not our clienteles, but the strata above them dare not eat with their hands, lest according to them they would be termed as uncivilized,
- 2. but we seldom have such guests also. It is the elite of the society who can venture into this experience provided they are not on a business meal. That leaves a fair amount of footfalls for us to keep trying on this total meal experience. After all what are finger bowls served at the end of an Indian meal? This is not so much of a problem with my thali outlet – Rajdhani, because it is only a destitute spoon that comes with the Thali setup for sipping hot kadhi or daal. Due to the demonstration effect of guests eating with their fingers it is easily replicated. Moreover Thali is the best example to set forth for using one’s own hands compared to any cutlery. There are some interesting observations made by me at people eating with their hands depending upon the region they hail from. I observe a North Indian guest ripping apart a feeble phulka with both his hands, like dressing a chicken without a knife. A West Indian guest manipulates his thumb and first two fingers to grip the bread, tear it into morsel size and dip it in the vegetable so artistically that too without the use of the other hand at all. A South Indian in turn makes exact dumplings out of the rice combine in the Thali and toss them each in his mouth as an ape chomps peanuts. The suppleness imbibed into the food by the Chef can get lost in the mastication process, with other foods, but imagine breaking up of a hot, steaming, soft, tender 'phulka' (Indian puffed Chappati Bread) and dipping it in hot bhajji (vegetable), kadhi or daal and relishing it. The ripple’s this process sends across the fingertips to the digestive system goes a long way in digesting food. Didn't our grannies tell us this while feeding us as kids? Can an indiscrete piece of cutlery provide this sensation to food? I feel that in India we should eat Indian food with bare hands. Our Indian food tastes best when eaten with hands.... God gave us senses to feel things otherwise he would have bestowed us with forks and knives and spoons in place of our fingers. Sure, we cannot sterilize our fingers the way we treat cutlery in the dish washing machine, but nice clean hands coupled with the sensuous pleasure of food! You may decide your priorities. Indian food should be eaten without a pair of cutlery in India, point taken, but what about Indian food eaten outside India. Well, we should teach the world over how to eat without cutlery. In the restaurant we are planning at Singapore, we are circumventing the problem about our elite guests spoiling their cuffs while dipping their “God-gifted cutlery” into Indian curries, by providing a designer cuff link. Driving the point home, I believe that Indian food in India or abroad should be eaten with clean hands and not with cutlery. Crockery usually imparts its properties into the food and for that reason eating in metal plates as averse to bone ash crafted bone china in my opinion is a better solution. Kamlesh Barot