Why is Indian food always expensive?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where is the poster that always suggests Indian food for big event because it’s cheap? Where is the cheap Indian food?

New Jersey or the Bay Area. You can’t fool all those desis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there a reason for this? Naan is always a la cart at 5 plus dollars a piece. My vegetarian palak paneer which is basically spinach and cheese is $22. And it’s expensive in every city not just DC.

Calling something "expensive" is tacky. The problem is with you, not the restaurant, as you make it out to be. You can't afford the food. Pretending to have power to question a price is so silly.

Using the word tacky is tacky boomer.

You can't afford the food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Home cooked Indian food is quick and simple to prepare. Get a few good cooks books or follow some decent blogs and you’re all set. It’s not rocket science.

It very very much depends on what you’re making, and whether you use store bought spice mixtures or make your own. I’m Indian and can make a bunch of food really quickly while there are others that are reserved for special occasions because they’re labor intensive. Just as an example, I started to make something today to serve to guests on Friday because it takes about 4 hours of low/slow cooking, and I can’t do that and 10 other things in one day. I’ll finish cooking it on the day of.

And honestly, there are a lot of people that do not take the time to properly make the foods, and while these can pass as “Indian food”, they’re nowhere near as good as they should be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Indian good is expensive because it requires certain expertise, equipment and spices, none of which are cheap. It also is expensive because people are willing to pay what the restaurants charge.

Not true except for a few specific dishes. Your run of the mill palak paneer, butter chicken and naan are very easy to make.

That does not even begin to explore the very wide world of Indian cuisine. It’s patently untrue that “except for a few specific dishes”, the rest do not require expertise, equipment or spices.

Do try to make a Dal baati churma or Soan papdi, and report back on how easy they’re to make (and before you go there, these are but two examples of hundreds of dishes that are difficult to make).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why shouldn't Indian food be expensive?

I’ll bite. With the exception of a very few innovative chefs in places like New York. You don’t have fine dining or high end Indian food. Same is true for Ethiopian food my favorite and other ethnic cuisines. The few top level chefs doing stewy ethnic cuisines are usually also trained in French techniques, doing some fusion, and upgrading the usual quality of the proteins.

Until Indian restaurants upgrade beyond what every other Indian restaurant serves at lower price points ,it’s just overpriced.

Give me a break. This smacks of disgusting racism. As if the only way ever to cook good food and finer foods is only if you have a background in French style techniques and culinary arts. What a joke. A throughly mediocre Italian restaurant has no problem charging $25-35 for chicken or veal parm (as of those are such innovative dishes). Or $20+ for a pizza. And people will pay. Meanwhile, the same consumer will complain that Indian food like lamb biryani is ‘expensive’ if it starts approaching the $25 mark even though it is way more labor intensive to make. They’ll demand biryani always cost less than $20.


It’s just an asinine, subliminal mental block based on ethnocentric stratification BS of what is perceived as ‘finer’ cuisine vs ‘cheaper’ foods. How come you never, ever find Italian, French, Spanish, and other western cuisines always on the list of ‘top cheap eats!’ lists? It’s always gotta be other ethnic cuisines.

So why don't Indian restaurants charge higher prices? If it's because people won't pay it, then that's because they don't want it.

Nobody is sitting around calculating what they are willing to pay for restaurant food based on the labor involved, etc. They are thinking about whether they want to eat it.

[Anonymous]

I make it at home. I’m Indian, but learned mostly online and from cookbooks. Try instant pot butter chicken which went viral a while back. So good. I didn’t grow up with north Indian food outside of restaurants (I’m South Indian and grew up veg), so it’s taken me a while to get comfortable. We buy frozen naan at the Indian store in the suburbs, but it’s not hard to make it. Other dishes that aren’t hard to make - chole, curries with frozen paneer, raita, dals of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Indian good is expensive because it requires certain expertise, equipment and spices, none of which are cheap. It also is expensive because people are willing to pay what the restaurants charge.

Not true except for a few specific dishes. Your run of the mill palak paneer, butter chicken and naan are very easy to make.

That does not even begin to explore the very wide world of Indian cuisine. It’s patently untrue that “except for a few specific dishes”, the rest do not require expertise, equipment or spices.

Do try to make a Dal baati churma or Soan papdi, and report back on how easy they’re to make (and before you go there, these are but two examples of hundreds of dishes that are difficult to make).

And who’s serving dal baati churma and soan papdi at any area restaurant?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Indian good is expensive because it requires certain expertise, equipment and spices, none of which are cheap. It also is expensive because people are willing to pay what the restaurants charge.

Not true except for a few specific dishes. Your run of the mill palak paneer, butter chicken and naan are very easy to make.

That does not even begin to explore the very wide world of Indian cuisine. It’s patently untrue that “except for a few specific dishes”, the rest do not require expertise, equipment or spices.

Do try to make a Dal baati churma or Soan papdi, and report back on how easy they’re to make (and before you go there, these are but two examples of hundreds of dishes that are difficult to make).

Silly argument. No one in India makes soan papdi at home. You buy it from the halwai. When I was a kid growing up in India there would be vendors cycling around the neighborhood carrying the feathery sweet in big glass jars. We’re talking about typical Indian restaurant fare in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If anyone wants a nice cheap recipe for summer, I recently started making makai paka, which is a corn curry (I think it might be east african, which has indian roots, but maybe not technically indian).

Delicious with the fresh corn we will be getting soon, pretty easy, not too crazy of spices needed.

Recipe please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Indian good is expensive because it requires certain expertise, equipment and spices, none of which are cheap. It also is expensive because people are willing to pay what the restaurants charge.

Not true except for a few specific dishes. Your run of the mill palak paneer, butter chicken and naan are very easy to make.

That does not even begin to explore the very wide world of Indian cuisine. It’s patently untrue that “except for a few specific dishes”, the rest do not require expertise, equipment or spices.

Do try to make a Dal baati churma or Soan papdi, and report back on how easy they’re to make (and before you go there, these are but two examples of hundreds of dishes that are difficult to make).

Silly argument. No one in India makes soan papdi at home. You buy it from the halwai. When I was a kid growing up in India there would be vendors cycling around the neighborhood carrying the feathery sweet in big glass jars. We’re talking about typical Indian restaurant fare in the US.

I have eaten a soan/halwa combo dessert at a restaurant; was quite good although I don’t really like either separately. I found it rather dismissive to say that with a few exceptions, Indian food is easy to make, when it is likely the other way around, or 50-50.

My point is that just because you can make some sort of bastardized version of some Indian dishes at home does not mean that the actual ones, served at many restaurants, are not time/labor/ingredient intensive.

Take butter chicken, for instance. The dish is believed to be created to use up leftover tandoori chicken. As such, you’ll have to first make tandoori chicken, and then use it to make butter chicken, which let’s just say that “crockpot butter chicken” is most decidedly not doing. Of course, since most of us don’t have a tandoor, if we bake the chicken, you’d then have to take the extra step of infusing the curry with a little smoke to emulate the authentic flavor. If a restaurant charges 20 bucks for a butter chicken and they’re serving the real deal, I’d call that a bargain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Indian good is expensive because it requires certain expertise, equipment and spices, none of which are cheap. It also is expensive because people are willing to pay what the restaurants charge.

Huh? that’s not true. Indian food does not require expertise equipment or special spices. You can get all that at H Mart. They charge a lot of money because people are willing to pay a lot of money. Indian food is not expensive to make.

Have you priced out a tandoor lately?

How about a dosa iron?

Buy much saffron do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Indian good is expensive because it requires certain expertise, equipment and spices, none of which are cheap. It also is expensive because people are willing to pay what the restaurants charge.

Not true except for a few specific dishes. Your run of the mill palak paneer, butter chicken and naan are very easy to make.

That does not even begin to explore the very wide world of Indian cuisine. It’s patently untrue that “except for a few specific dishes”, the rest do not require expertise, equipment or spices.

Do try to make a Dal baati churma or Soan papdi, and report back on how easy they’re to make (and before you go there, these are but two examples of hundreds of dishes that are difficult to make).

Silly argument. No one in India makes soan papdi at home. You buy it from the halwai. When I was a kid growing up in India there would be vendors cycling around the neighborhood carrying the feathery sweet in big glass jars. We’re talking about typical Indian restaurant fare in the US.

I have eaten a soan/halwa combo dessert at a restaurant; was quite good although I don’t really like either separately. I found it rather dismissive to say that with a few exceptions, Indian food is easy to make, when it is likely the other way around, or 50-50.

My point is that just because you can make some sort of bastardized version of some Indian dishes at home does not mean that the actual ones, served at many restaurants, are not time/labor/ingredient intensive.

Take butter chicken, for instance. The dish is believed to be created to use up leftover tandoori chicken. As such, you’ll have to first make tandoori chicken, and then use it to make butter chicken, which let’s just say that “crockpot butter chicken” is most decidedly not doing. Of course, since most of us don’t have a tandoor, if we bake the chicken, you’d then have to take the extra step of infusing the curry with a little smoke to emulate the authentic flavor. If a restaurant charges 20 bucks for a butter chicken and they’re serving the real deal, I’d call that a bargain.

It's only a bargain if you want to eat it. It's not a bargain if you would rather get something else for the same price.

People pay more for the food they crave. It sounds like the people who really want Indian food at a higher price point are either going to the more expensive places, or they are learning to make something similar enough at home.

You can be as mad about it as you want, but when hungry, nobody is calculating the effort-to-effect ratio and deciding they just aren't willing to pay a brown person that amount. They are asking what they are hungry for and what they are willing to spend for it.

[Anonymous]

I feel like those are mid-range prices, and most Indian restaurants I have been to are mid-range nice places. So it doesn't seem off to me.

[Anonymous]

OP just noticed covid greedflation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Indian good is expensive because it requires certain expertise, equipment and spices, none of which are cheap. It also is expensive because people are willing to pay what the restaurants charge.

Not true except for a few specific dishes. Your run of the mill palak paneer, butter chicken and naan are very easy to make.

That does not even begin to explore the very wide world of Indian cuisine. It’s patently untrue that “except for a few specific dishes”, the rest do not require expertise, equipment or spices.

Do try to make a Dal baati churma or Soan papdi, and report back on how easy they’re to make (and before you go there, these are but two examples of hundreds of dishes that are difficult to make).

Silly argument. No one in India makes soan papdi at home. You buy it from the halwai. When I was a kid growing up in India there would be vendors cycling around the neighborhood carrying the feathery sweet in big glass jars. We’re talking about typical Indian restaurant fare in the US.

I have eaten a soan/halwa combo dessert at a restaurant; was quite good although I don’t really like either separately. I found it rather dismissive to say that with a few exceptions, Indian food is easy to make, when it is likely the other way around, or 50-50.

My point is that just because you can make some sort of bastardized version of some Indian dishes at home does not mean that the actual ones, served at many restaurants, are not time/labor/ingredient intensive.

Take butter chicken, for instance. The dish is believed to be created to use up leftover tandoori chicken. As such, you’ll have to first make tandoori chicken, and then use it to make butter chicken, which let’s just say that “crockpot butter chicken” is most decidedly not doing. Of course, since most of us don’t have a tandoor, if we bake the chicken, you’d then have to take the extra step of infusing the curry with a little smoke to emulate the authentic flavor. If a restaurant charges 20 bucks for a butter chicken and they’re serving the real deal, I’d call that a bargain.

It's only a bargain if you want to eat it. It's not a bargain if you would rather get something else for the same price.

People pay more for the food they crave. It sounds like the people who really want Indian food at a higher price point are either going to the more expensive places, or they are learning to make something similar enough at home.

You can be as mad about it as you want, but when hungry, nobody is calculating the effort-to-effect ratio and deciding they just aren't willing to pay a brown person that amount. They are asking what they are hungry for and what they are willing to spend for it.

If restaurants are charging that much and able to stay in business, then there must be a large enough group of people that do believe that it is worth the money.