Your Local Indian Restaurant is Chronically Online
Behind that tray of biryani is a very popular TikTok account.
In her book Eight Flavors: The Untold History of American Cuisine, Sarah Lohman tells the tale of America’s first renowned Indian chef, Ranji Smile. In 1899, Smile was hired at Sherry's, the famed fine-dining restaurant on West 37th Street, to give New York’s Gilded Age elites “a taste of the exotic flavors of the Orient.” Troves of wealthy tycoons and industrialists gathered at the restaurant with eager anticipation for his chicken Madras, lettuce Ceylon, and Bombay duck, a gelatinous fish native to South Asia.
Smile, who went by “Joe,” served the patrons himself, “immaculately arrayed in a heavy white linen India costume, with a gorgeous turban of white all outlined in gold braid,” according to an 1899 review in the New York Letter. It was dinner and a show — a performance of perceived Indianness in a bid for authenticity to diners expecting nothing but.
A lot has changed since 1899, but the performance of authenticity remains indelible for today’s Indian restaurants across the U.S., UK, and Canada. A growing number of them, however, are forgoing cultural caricatures and leaning on memes, Reels, and TikToks to appeal to a new generation of diners who are chronically online and hungry for raw, unfiltered realness.
