Indian restaurants boom as biryani, samosas, tikkas hook Poles

WARSAW - There may be an economic slump in Poland, but the growing popularity of Indian food has set off an Indian restaurant boom in the Polish capital and other cities with samosas, chicken tikkas, biryani and what is known as mango lassi hooking Poles, many of whom have begun cooking Indian dishes in their homes.

“It is amazing but true that in the past six months around a dozen new Indian restaraunts have come up along with six old ones. To cater to the demands of Warsawoians, restaurants like Aarti, Namaste India, Buddha Bar, Bombay Masala, Ganesh and many others have been opened largely by Sindhi businessmen,” said Devender Singh, owner of Maharaja, the first Indian restraurant here that has been in business since 1992.

“Earlier most of these businessmen were dealing with fabric business. Now all of a sudden these people see a gold mine in restaurant business,” Singh told IANS.

“Now you go to any corner of Warsaw you will find an Indian restarauant close to your liking. To open a new restaurant in a posh street like Nowy Swiet, or for that matter in the club-stoned small streets of Old Town, where rents are exhubrant, is quite costly. Still these businesmen have taken a risk to compete with other continental and Polish restaurants. One has to appreciate their business sense even in the recessionary times,” J. J. Singh, president of Indo-Polish Chamber of Commerce and Industry who himself is a partner in Bollywood Lounge, told IANS.

The success of Bollywood Lounge, a favourite hub for the young crowd on weekends, has prompted Singh and his partners to open another branch in Gdandsk. Similarly, branches of Namasta India Lounge of Ashok Manani and India Lounge have come up in Warsaw in the last three months to encash on the success of Bollywood Lounge.

“We at the Indian-Polish Cultural Committee are happy with the evergrowing numbers of Indian restrauarnts coming up in many Polish cities, such as Krakow, Poznan and Gdansk. One can open a modest Indian restaraunt with two Indian cooks and three Polish waitresses, provided one gets cheap accomodation. A big part of the success goes the Polish tourists who have been to India in the last five years. Their stay In India have made them more attuned to Indian food,” Janusz Krzyzowski, president of the committee, told IANS.

“Some 90,000 people have visited India in the last five years. They are the new converts and now mountain has come to Mohammad to satisfy their demands.”

“Once you are hooked to Indian food, it becomes a life-long addiction,” said Boguslaw Zakrezewski, an Indophile and a former ambassador.

Many Poles, he said, have also started cooking few Indian dishes in their own homes thanks to spices available in Indian shops. “Their rates are moderate and the quality is good. One can buy also Indian vegitables such as okra (bhindi) along with Indian sweets like gulab jamun and rasgullas,” he said.

(Surender Bhutani can be reached at suren84in@yahoo.com)