Yet Another Guy Writing About Food

This is someone else’s picture. Trust me, the one I cooked looked just as good.

Unlike other American cities like New York, Chicago, and even Ann Arbor, Michigan, Indo-Chinese cooking has apparently not yet caught on in Philadelphia. And that’s a shame.

What passes for Chinese food in North India would be largely unrecognizable to anyone from China (while the same can also be said for much Chinese food in America.) But authenticity aside, this “Chinese”, or Indo-Chinese, food is very popular in urban areas across North India as a form of “fast food.” (I’ve never traveled in South India, so I can’t speak for its footprint there).

Indo-Chinese cooking generally involves prolific use of both the deep-fryer and chilies. While neither of these elements are out of place in Chinese cooking, the Indian enthusiasm for chilies trumps most Chinese regional cuisines, with the exception of Szechwan. The key difference is the other spices and flavorings involved: in Indo-Chinese cooking, chicken or vegetables are also seasoned with ginger, garlic. Then, after deep-frying, they are doused in a spicy-sweet sauce, similar to ketchup. Here, the best option is Maggi chili sauce, available in Indian grocery stores here in U.S., but ketchup will do in a pinch. At the end, Indo-Chinese dishes are garnished with even more chiles, ginger, and cilantro, accoutrements rarely seen in traditional Chinese food.

Americans are slowly catching on to Indo-Chinese, as evidenced by its inclusion as #32 in Saveur Magazine’s 100 list. The issue included a recipe for Gobi Manchurian, an Indo-Chinese preparation for deep-fryer cauliflower that I had consumed frequently in India, though not as frequently as Chicken Manchurian. For a dish largely considered “fast food,” the preparation was complex when I made it a little over a month ago, as the deep-frying was preceded by pureeing, steaming, whisking, and plenty of chopping, while followed by the cooking of the sauce. Still, I was pleased with the outcome, and intend to make the dish again.

But because of the labor-intensive nature of the dish, I’m on the lookout for restaurants in the area that will do the work for me. On a walk in Upper Darby around the 69th Street Terminal this afternoon, I passed an Indo-Pakistani restaurant with a computer-printed sign in the window that read “We Have Indo-Chinese Food.” I went inside, looked at a menu, and didn’t see anything validating the sign.

I then asked the man behind the counter if they did serve any Indo-Chinese. He responded, “We have chicken fried rice…”

I interrupted him: “What about gobi manchurian, chicken manchurian, chicken chili…”

My inquiry was then turned over to the manager, who told me that they no longer have what I was looking for. “I would make six or seven, and only one or two get ordered,” he said. Stymied, I headed out the door. The search for real Indo-Chinese in Philly continues.