Restaurant serving both Veg and Non-Veg food - Facts:
- Soups: Most restaurants prepare soup using Stock. Stock is essentially water in a pot that is on sim (i.e. getting heated slowly), with veggies and flavour enhancing pieces (e.g. Bones). In most cases, the restaurant will have one stock pot and it will of course have the bones in them. So when a soup is prepared, the same stock water is used.
- Entrees: All entrees are prepared upon order. The cooks have a few sauce-pans in which they prepare the dishes. In a busy restaurant, the same sauce-pan gets used for preparing veg and non veg dishes. If you are expecting the cooks to be so careful as to use different utensils during busy hours, suit yourself. Having said this, most good cooks atleast wash the sauce-pan a little before preparing a new dish. Even if they use different sauce-pans, the ladles etc. are the same. Again, expecting them to wash each time is impractical. Check where the closest washing area for the cook is and you will know why washing the ladles, sauce-pans and utensils after each order is virtually impossible.
- Frying: When you order fried dishes, most restaurants, use a "Kadai" that has hot oil on boil to fry the specific dish. In most restaurants, the same Kadai of Oil is used to fry everything - from French Fries to Paneer Pakodas to Chicken Wings. So you are not served non-veg pieces, but your dish is fried in the same oil.
- Handling of Food: Most cooks use their hands (in some cases with disposable gloves) to handle food. Do you believe they will have the time and luxury to wash their hands or change the gloves everytime they prepare a new order? So even if they wear gloves, the same gloves which picked up a chicken piece for the previous order, picks up the Paneer piece for your order.
- Cutting boards and knives: All orders which require cutting fresh veggies and meat (salads for instance) are done in the same area. While the cutting board is probably wiped with a cloth and even the knife may be cleaned with a cloth, they are not really washed for every new order. So the same cutting board and knife used to cut boneless chicken pieces for a curry are the same ones used to chop the cauliflower for your order.
- Washing: Find me a restaurant which has separate washing areas for Veg and Non Veg food - I would say it does not exist. So all the plates (different colours or now), spoons, forks, bowls etc. are cleaned in the same area. The same area is also used for cleaning all the utensils used to prepare the food.
In summary, if you are extremely finicky about Veg and Non Veg food, simply go only to restaurants which serve pure veg food. If you go to restaurants serving both Veg & Non-Veg food, be assured that the staff will in 99.9% of the cases ensure that you do not have any non-veg food/pieces in your order, but all the back-office kitchen activities that happen as described above - you really don't have a work-around.
People, relatives in particular, feel hurt if I don't partake food in the non-vaidik functions they host like a get-together or a birthday party. Mostly these events are hosted in a star hotel where both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food is prepared in the same kitchen but served separately.
It is uneasy to see people who talk of achara partake food at these places. But the worst part is for the sake of the host, I have to tolerate some weird comments. Recently, a senior person from the family hosting an event misunderstood my stand and asked me 'will you not partake food even in vaidik events where you are not sure if the food is prepared or served by brahmins?'
And I replied 'I don't discriminate like that, instead I am particular on where and how the food is prepared'.
Also read:
People, relatives in particular, feel hurt if I don't partake food in the non-vaidik functions they host like a get-together or a birthday party. Mostly these events are hosted in a star hotel where both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food is prepared in the same kitchen but served separately.
It is uneasy to see people who talk of achara partake food at these places. But the worst part is for the sake of the host, I have to tolerate some weird comments. Recently, a senior person from the family hosting an event misunderstood my stand and asked me 'will you not partake food even in vaidik events where you are not sure if the food is prepared or served by brahmins?'
And I replied 'I don't discriminate like that, instead I am particular on where and how the food is prepared'.
Also read:
No comments:
Post a Comment