Originally Posted by
stimpy
Hmmm. It's a pretty big country so we shouldn't generalize. I've dined in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and countless times in Bombay and loved every meal. In fact, the food is pretty much the only thing I like about India. I've even eaten at truck stops (dhabas I think they are called) outside of town and loved every bite. India is also the only place in the world where I like vegetarian food. And I don't always eat in upscale restaurants. Sometimes it is in company cafes, sometimes in peoples homes. I always pack on the pounds after a week or two down there. And like China, every region is different.
Some great food can be had at dhabas. There's one outside of Amritsar that has some of the best Punjabhi food around ^ You mentioned Bombay and Bangalore, they are the cities I was thinking of that have a growing number of quality restaurants. Outside of those food can be fairly underwhelming in rural/out of the way India partly due to a lack of good quality vegetables and cheeses at many places (from street food up to the "best" in town).
I attribute this mostly to economics and infrastructure - simply by going from Kerala to Sri Lanka you got a decent jump in quality of ingredients. Similarly in Seattle and San Jose, American regions with a number of recent immigrants, I've found very good Indian with better quality ingredients than in India. Unlike Chinese restaurants in the USA these Indian places will have dishes similar to those on the sub-continent