Eating out in India: Growing up in the 80s and 90's.

You too? Growing up in the 80’s/90’s, middle-class Indian families could afford to eat out only on a few Sundays.

They would treat themselves usually at a ‘Shiv Sagar Pure Veg’ kind of restaurant. Families would stick to one restaurant for a few years, till the service got bad, or like how we once discovered a cockroach in the biryani.

These restaurants would have upstairs seating with AC and downstairs without AC — the AC pricing up by a few rupees.

Staff had different uniforms — the order-taking waiter wore a white shirt or a british-time-wala turban with a pleated cloth that fanned out on top. The ‘boy’ whose job was to swipe the plates off the table into a steel bucket, wore a dark blue uniform and kept a plaid cloth over his shoulder as would all ‘Ramu’’s from Hindi movies.

Getting to the venue wasn’t easy.

Only a few families owned cars — if they did, it was a Maruti 800 or Premier Padmini. (The spacious kidnapping wala van (Maruti van) was a terrible visual choice for a family). Hence, most families had to split logistics — Usually chachu and you on a scooter; while the others squished into a rickshaw with the youngest kid sprawled across laps.

In my family of 6, we ordered the same meal for ~20 years.

Matar Paneer and Veg Kadhai. Experimentation meant switching to Veg Jal Fraizee or Veg Hydrabadi. Never to date have I understood the difference between these two…