Edward Newberry

Taj Chaat House

 

On Wednesday our class visited a Taj grocery store that included a Taj Chaat House in the back of it.  The grocery store had a unique smell to it that stemmed from the numerous spices and products inside.  There was also an entire section dedicated to rice with many varieties of rice inside large industrial size bags.  This served to further highlight the importance of rice in Indian cuisine.  The store also contained many food products I had never seen before that seemed to be distinctly Indian.  The spice aisle was also very impressive as they were hundreds of combinations of spices and even large bags of straight chili powder.  This is not something you see in your average American grocery store as Chili is a fundamental element of Indian cuisine.

After briefly browsing the grocery store aisles we entered the Taj Chaat house which was a medium sized restaurant.  They had the menu items all along the top of the grill with a few pictures to show the dishes.  You would place your order at the front and they hand you a buzzer to alert you when the food is ready.  When you enter the Chaat house you are immediately struck with the smells of the cooking Indian cuisine that was being prepared in the kitchen a few feet from where you place your order.  The restaurant has a very extensive menu and I had never heard of the majority of the foods.  There were smaller items like the small potato like dumplings and then there were the larger platters that had little bowls filled with different kinds of rice and chickpea’s.  The majority of the plates came with different types of bread to eat the food with.  The restaurant was also entirely vegetarian.

Restaurants like the Taj Chaat house are incredibly important for minority cultures in America.  They offer a place to maintain an Indian identity and to be surrounded with items and smells that are distinctly Indian.  In Sen places like these are described as a place for global culture to be consumed and to witness the effects of globalization. (Sen. 198)  The grocery store is also a unique location because many of these products won’t be found in the average grocery store.  Also Chaat café’s have grown in popularity in the U.S. as well as India.  In India they were originally just roadside vendors but they have developed and expanded into formal sit-down restaurants. (Sen. 205)  In the Sen article the author describes the grocery store and the back room Chaat house as a cultural cross-road in which these distinct place have overlapped. (Sen. 214)

The Chaat house that we visited was very similar to the Vik’s described in the Sen article.  It was tucked away in the back of the store and was a place where you could separate yourself from the buzz of the grocery store and bring your family.  The whole complex seemed to have it’s own cultural identity and you could see how important it would be for local Indian communities living in the Plano area

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