Indian food's poor representation among American restaurants is not a malaise

A half-century after Madhur Jaffrey's book

Photo by Akhil Chandran on Unsplash

A half-century is a respectable time. It gives a sapling the chance to grow into a tree and become a local landmark. It allows a man to become a pillar of the community. And should the right cookbook have introduced a cuisine to a foreign land, over the span of 50 years one might expect that style of food preparation to have settled into the taste palate of its new home.

But 50 years after the Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking appeared in the United States, it’s fair to say Indian food hasn’t become typical American restaurant fare. Which is to say it’s poorly represented on the US restaurant scene. “Asian” restaurants in the US dominate the dining-out experience (12 per cent of all restaurants) and Chinese cuisine dominates the Asian restaurants (39 per cent). Indian restaurants are just seven per cent of Asian restaurants.

We learn as much from a new study by the Pew Research Center.

Before anyone starts tut-tutting, it’s worth examinin…