Comfort Food for Thought

Written By: Aashka Shroff

Graphic By: Temi Idowu

Earlier this month, I suddenly had the urge to re-watch The Hundred-Foot Journey, one of my favorite movies as a kid. Adapted from Richard C. Morais’ novel, The Hundred-Foot Journey is about an Indian family immigrating to France after losing their matriarch to a riot-induced fire in their restaurant after a disputed election. After many obstacles, the family opens a new Indian restaurant across from an established French restaurant with a Michelin Star. The film depicts their struggles with connecting to French society as immigrants as well as using food to create a name for themselves and retain their Indian identities. After watching, I was reminded of how incredibly personal the film is to me. While I’m not exactly a member of a family immigrating to France and starting a restaurant, food plays a significant role in my and many other children of immigrants’ lives. Food allows us to cultivate our identities through individualized connections with our heritages.

I grew up in Plano, a small suburb outside of Dallas, Texas, where Indian cuisine is no joke. As a part of a huge wave of South Asian immigrants, my parents immigrated to Dallas in the mid-1990s. In red meat loving Texas, maintaining their Hindu and vegetarian diets was challenging, to say the least. Not many places were accommodating of their dietary restrictions and Indian grocery stores didn’t really exist yet. Over the years, my parents found ways to enjoy their dishes from home by being resourceful, like substituting strawberry jam mixed with chili powder and garam masala for tamarind chutney when they ran out and wanted a quick bhel fix. With this resourcefulness, my parents ensured they could raise their children connected to their heritage and on their own terms, despite living in a foreign country.

When I moved to Austin, I was deeply homesick. Instead of missing Plano itself, my homesickness manifested through late night cravings for Taj Chaat House’s pani puris and my mom’s aloo parathas with yogurt and spicy lime pickle. I missed eating with my hands and having loud and dynamic conversations in Gujarati with my parents and our family friends on every holiday. I missed sitting in the kitchen while my mom cooked dinner for the night as the smell of chili and garam masala filled the house. I missed how instead of chicken noodle soup as a sickness remedy, my dad made warm dal and rice. What I missed more than anything was feeling connected to my family and our culture as their daughter and sister rather than a completely independent adult. 

To help alleviate my homesickness, I’ve started incorporating Indian stores into my grocery runs. Whenever I step into one, I am transported back to my childhood: back when I used to go to Patel Brothers with my parents to buy groceries for dinner. There’s just a different feeling from picking up Haldiram’s falooda ice cream for a girls’ night with my roommates. Being around familiar smells, sights, and a very different set of cultural norms has made me both feel closer to my family and their traditions and create my own experiences with my heritage as I enter this new stage of my life.