Is Gentrification Changing Food Flavours?

Saturday, 13 July 2024, 3:55 pm
Article: RNZ

Sandringham is traditionally home to some of Auckland's best South Asian restaurants, but like many parts of the city it has been increasingly subject to gentrification, increasing rents and changing populations.

Similarly, an article in the New York Times said the same thing was happening in Mexico - with the result that food was getting less spicy.

Indian spices and curry pastes manufacturer Dolly Mumma founder, Perzen Patel, who also leads Indian food tours in the Auckland suburb of Sandringham, said gentrification had been changing the spice levels of Indian food in New Zealand.

She told Afternoons some restaurants had begun offering Indian mild, Indian medium and Indian hot options.

"It is a bit disappointing," she said.

"I think, as a restaurant, when you're representing your country's cuisine, you owe it to people to kind of put up the closest possible dish to what it would really be."

Patel said she felt a lot of people had said they did not like Indian food because they could not handle spice, but actually very little Indian food was spicy.

"I think there's a nuance here, because there is spice and chilli, and then there is flavour," she said.

"A lot of Indian food for like centuries has been flavourful, but very little of it is actually just spicy, hot to the tongue."

She said there were regions in South India, and closer to the desert in Rajasthan, where they did serve really spicy food because of hot temperatures.

"If you eat spicy food, it helps you break a sweat and cool your body down, but if you were to just go to the average person's house in Mumbai or in Delhi, I would say that the food is kind of a medium."

Sandringham was the Indian food capital of Auckland, which was surprising since not that many Indians lived there, Patel said.

Indian restaurants and grocery stores had been "constantly growing and multiplying" in the suburb, she said.

"It's quite interesting that it is kind of like a hub, but it's also a really good thing that it's so close to the city," she said.

"I think it's one of those unique places where, there's a lot of Indian joints and Indian grocery stores, but also, if you peek into one of them, they're frequented by a lot of Indians, and to me, that's often code for knowing that this is a good place to go."

The median sale price in Sandringham has increased by more than $800,000 in the last 10 years.

It was $365,000 in 2014, now it is $1.17 million.

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