Saturday, May 14, 2005

Chindian v/s Chinjabi

China Garden, set up by one Nelson Wang (Wong?), has been very popular among Chinese restaurants in Mumbai. I think he has also set up restautants in other Indian cities.

It is generally believed that Nelson Wang introduced Chinese dishes that were acceptable to the Indian palate. For example, the "Machurian" or the "Schezwan". Nelson Wang came up with the idea of mixing the correct condiments to come up with these dishes. Of course, these are now copied over and available everywhere. This is referred (by Wang) as "Chindian" (Chinese Indian) cuisine.

Recently, in an interview, he said that there is now a new cuisine (created not by him, but by some people in the north of India), where they use a lot of Indian spices to make the dishes more pungent and hot. This has been given the name "Chinjabi" ("Chinese Punjabi").

Probably, Chinese cuisine is the only cuisine (apart from Jain) that does not use potatoes.

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