American store goes viral for whitewashing Indian cuisines

WESTERN countries have often been careless when dealing with Asian cultures. Whether it be portraying our cultures on screen or adopting our customs, our western counterparts tend to overlook crucial aspects of our traditions.

Take this American store in Washington for instance. The restaurant which specialises in Indian cuisines has gone viral for mislabeling and misnaming traditional Indian dishes.

According to Twitter user, Inika, the restaurant has indeed ‘white washed’ several of its traditional Indian offerings. The food outlet, for example, named its vadais which is served with dhal curry ‘Dunked doughnut (savoury fried doughnuts) delight’.

The outlet also named its idlis dhal curry dish as dunked rice cake delight. On top of that, they also label plain thosais as ‘naked crepes’ and masala thosais as ‘smashed potato crepes’. As expected, users online have been outraged over this reckless handling.

One user wrote: “This is an embarrassment for the Indian community outside India: how still weak & taken for granted despite adorning big tech as CEOs, Doctors, cabinet & what not! Indians & everything associated with them: music, food, culture have no respectable existence in western world…shame!!”

While another user simply tweeted, “what in the ghost kitchen is this abomination”. Apart from the westernised names, netizens have also taken issue with the pricing of the dishes. Many found it to be unreasonably expensive.

The restaurant, ‘Indian Crepe Co’ has yet to respond officially.