Never heard curry used to refer to all Indian cuisine. Around here you say you’re going for Indian food…then the next question is what kind, and perhaps a ten minute conversation about what and where. It’s like saying tacos to refer to all Mexican food, or spaghetti to refer to all Italian food. I know this might be stretching things but reductionism and shorthand is often seen as dismissive, not important. I get some of its vernacular but I see the dismissive part.
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That’s how most of the Indian restaurants work here. There’s a type of dish and you pick your protein. The way the food is talked about here may just be different. I don’t think anyone would say “Let’s go for a curry” here, but they might in the UK?
I see an abundance of Chinese / Americanized Chinese / Thai places do the exact same thing, i.e. being able to choose your protein to go with pad thai, any of the curries, basil stir-fries, etc.
Chalk it up to the ‘blessings’ of globalization / individualization.
“Have it your way!”
In my experience, folk are more likely to say “let’s go for an Indian”, than “let’s go for a curry”.
But, to inject a bit of humour into the discussion, let’s take a break while we “go for an English”.
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I almost posted this yesterday. Love it.
Also the one where they can’t pronounce “Jonathan” – and finally name him something else. Couldn’t find that for some reason.
Thx for sharing.
“WE’LL HAVE TEN BREAD ROLLS, WITH THAT SPREAD.”
Hilarious.
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sorry - that link doesnt seem to be showing the full sketch.
Here:
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Watched the whole clip on youtube. Thanks for that, very funny.
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This is exactly the point. Each of those is a different preparation with its own name – which is not the generic “curry”.
It doesn’t matter that you can mix & match proteins – each “sauce” is still a distinct dish.
@ChimayoJoe You are right that in the US the mix-and-match places would probably not call that whole list of preparations generically “curry” – that flattening is British in origin.
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Tarkari (persian origin: green vegetables) is actually broadly used across north and east india (also nepal, pakistan, bangladesh). Also “sabzi-tarkari” in duplicate.
“Vegetable” (or the specific vegetable name – eg aloo gobi) works for me if I need to explain or translate.
“Jhol” in my experience is “thin gravy” (like saalan or rassa) – there is only one dish called Maaccher Jhol that I know, the rest have their own names.
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Yes, this is the whole thing, isn’t it. I can’t think of many (any?) other cuisines / cultures that feel the need to do this.
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I saw a restaurant menu last year that listed the biryani section as “Biryani Curries” rather than “Rice” 
. Wish I had taken a pic.
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We do have curry on the menus here. It’s similar but distinct from makhani or tikka masala. Again, it’s a pick your protein type dish.
We had an excellent chain called Baluchi’s in nyc in the 90s/'00s that sort of did mix & match gravies & proteins, but my favorite dish there was called just Chicken Curry – it was a distinct preparation of homestyle gravy that might have been called khadamasala or kadhai or just plain saalan in someone’s house, but they used a generic name for the menu. Actually I would never have ordered it with that name, but every Indian person I knew recommended it because it tasted like home food . I still miss that place – great Rogan Josh too, and Palak Gosht.
Not really. In many, if not most, of the examples, the only difference is how much chilli is added. Many, if not most, of the British “curry houses” will have a tomato based stock gravy, to which they add an amount of chilli depending on which sauce has been ordered..
Here’s a good link further describing it and giving a recipe for making your own stock gravy at home - so you can try and replicate restaurant curries.
I used to have a copy of Kris Dhillon’s cookbook "Curry Secret " (or similar name) but got rid of it when I no longer wanted to cook British Indian restaurant dishes.
FWIW, Wikipedia has a useful article on the development of British Indian restaurant food.
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Well, there are varying consistencies of jhol - I guess this demonstrates how complex Indian regional cuisines are. Depending on the occasion, you can have the very thin, light jhol for convalescents or for hot weather. And you can have thicker, more robust jhol for guests or cooler weather. Fish, chicken, goat, vegetables - can all be prepared in that style and identified as jhol.
The main one that comes to mind is Thai - they have Thai names for the different preparations but on menus it is just ‘red curry’, ‘green curry’, ‘yellow curry’, ‘jungle curry’, etc.
I checked one of my Bengali cookbooks written in English. Each recipe has the Bengali name phonetically written in English, then an English ‘translation’ - often the English translation includes the word curry or curried in it.
Of course we can encourage the use of English terminology that excludes the word curry - I guess that will take time and effort. But if a non-Indian friend asks me for a chicken curry recipe in the meantime, I won’t be offended.
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I notice that some Indian restaurants divide the menu by protein, with different preparations listed under each, while others divide by preparation style and then list what proteins are available. I consider the former to be copying American-style menus and the latter more authentic. But I could be totally off-base here.
If one drifts east to Thailand, I notice that everything in the Maesri line of canned pastes is called “curry”. Not that this means Indians do this, or should, and I have no idea whether the Maesri line is doing this to cater to Americans. (That doesn’t seem likely to me, but again, I could be totally off-base.)
Up in the “Cooking” category, there’s a topic on “Your favorite curry / curry recipes”. It displays the same lumping together of everything Ind in a sauce as “curry” that the article decries.
I grew up thinking of curry as a “West Indian” ( now Caribbean) dish. I believe a lot of people I know still think of it that way. 
I’ve learned that version has its own commercial “curry powder”.
I’m always intrigued by the history of how that came to be.
Not really. In many, if not most, of the examples, the only difference is how much chilli is added. Many, if not most, of the British “curry houses” will have a tomato based stock gravy, to which they add an amount of chilli depending on which sauce has been ordered..
Here’s a good link further describing it and giving a recipe for making your own stock gravy at home - so you can try and replicate restaurant curries.
Possibly through Trinidad, where a high percentage of the population have an Indian heritage. Many indentured labourers were brought from India in the latter half of the 19th century.
Of course, it may simply be a matter that the Caribbean is near to chilli’s origins, so it could have just been a matter of using local- ish produce.
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My understanding is that it was about “indentured servants” influence on the rest of the Caribbean population. The roti part seems to trace origins to people from India in Trinidad. Again, it wasn’t that long ago that I thought roti was a Trini invention.
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