Mumbai’s Melting Pot

Restaurant or Rest in Peace?

The glory of Mumbai’s restaurants: Udupi joints serving endless dishes of hot steaming idlis, rawa dosas and medu vadas along with veg Manchurian, American chop suey and Hakka noodles to hungry office-goers; kebab establishments offering butter chicken, Hyderabadi daal and seekh kebabs to happy groups of gourmands; Chinese and Pan-Asian eateries dishing out golden fried prawns, tom yum soups, and Vietnamese noodles for ladies who lunch; pizzerias and sandwich shops listing penne in pink sauce and thin crust Margherita, along with Peri Peri paneer combos for the young and restless; Irani cafes with their brun maska, masala tea and berry Pulao to satiate the lonely traveller; Gujarati chaat houses serving street food like pani puri, made with mineral water; pure veg restaurants with their all-you-can-eat bottomless thalis...

How much of a city’s character is defined by its restaurants? Would it be wrong to say that restaurants command the same import as a city’s important cultural elements like its museums, theatres and art galleries?

After all, what would some of the world’s great cities be without their restaurants? Paris without its cafes, Rome without its trattorias, Tokyo without its Izakayas, Barcelona without its tapas bars or New York without its neighbourhood delis? imagination in the past two decades as never before. TV shows based on food, food awards and contests and foodrelated content are an integral part of our lives today. What’s more, food has come to be seen as a community exercise; it’s not as important to have tasted a dish as to have shared it on social media.

A popular cartoon in the New Yorker captured the zeitgeist perfectly — a couple goes out to a fancy restaurant and orders their food. As they are about to finish their first course, the server interrupts them and asks, “Pardon me, is everything all right?” The couple is surprised and replies in the affirmative. The server responds, “But, you haven’t even photographed your food yet!”

More than the taste on your palate, food today has come to represent a person’s status, style and taste, much the same way as their choice of fashion or vocation does. Often, much of the restaurant-going experience is about being seen at the right place. Patronising a particular eatery sends out messages of who you are and what you aspire to.

Considering their ubiquity, it is almost difficult to imagine that restaurants across the world are facing an existential crisis today.

Perhaps the worst-affected are restaurants in India. Though it employs and provides jobs to thousands, here, the restaurant sector appears to be the favourite punching bag for the powers that be. So, while governments around the world have stepped in to help their local restaurants through the lockdowns in the past year (even paying some of the wage bill in cities like London), Indian restaurant haven’t been afforded the same considerations.

Among the first to down their shutters at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown last year, Indian restaurants seem to be the last to open their doors to customers. Last week, in a move that appeared hopeful, their working hours were relaxed till 10pm. However, the city’s leading restaurateurs have been crying foul about the regulation that requires all members of staff to be fully vaccinated, and say the government has unrealistic expectations and is giving them step- motherly treatment (given the shortage of vaccines). When train services, malls and cinemas have been opened, they ask why their particular requirements haven’t been considered.

On its part, the government argues that it is for everyone’s safety and that restaurants by definition will have mask-less customers, and the probability of spread is heightened.