SOUTH VS NORTH INDIAN FOOD!

Just know you're Indian-American, but don't let the stereotypes get to you. Just do what you want and as long as you're happy with it, that's what I think. David's dosa radar went off. What's going on everybody? Today we are in the East Village and I am super excited because we are about to run a South Indian food episode. So previously our Indian videos have been more focused on North Indian food because that was probably what was more available to us at the time. But today we're in East Village, New York, and we are outside of one of the best and only South Indian restaurants in the city. And you know we couldn't do this video without a South Indian friend. And here we got... Yeah, I'm Vivek. I'm a comedian here in New York City. My parents are from South India. I am from New Jersey, which is like kind of an extension of South India, right? And of course, to compare and contrast, we gotta get our North Indian friend in on it too. Yo, what's up? My name is Jaz. I'm from South Jamaica, Queens. And my parents are from Punjab. I'm aware that there are some conversations that, as a Chinese person, I don't really know about that the Indians are having. We're gonna have a really nuanced discussion, and I'm gonna kick his a** once the camera's on. I came here to fight, man. I came here for the money. I don't know, in a real fight though. That's what Punjabis are known for, right? That's what we're known for, man. You got the sheath on your leg? Wait, Vivek, did you mean kick his a** in real life or on the internet? Uh, at the SAT, the Kumon. All right, we're outside of one of the only South Indian restaurants in Manhattan, Kaladi. Let's go. Hey, guys. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. So here's the owner, Ramnia. What made you want to start this place? Lack of South Indian food in the city. Simple. Whenever I crave Indian food, most of the Indian restaurants in the city only serve Northern Indian food. Most people probably are more familiar with North India. Yes, yes. When British ruled India, they couldn't take the spice. And chicken tikka masala is not even Indian food. It's a modified dish to accommodate a white salad at that time. Northern Indian food is more sweet or more rich with cream, butter. South Indian food is more lentils and rice. In general, Indian food is rice. But Southern India, we use a lot more of rice, I think. And also the flavors. Like we use curry leaves a lot. We use spices a lot. It's like a night and day difference. Is South Indian food more Indian? Hi. Okay. I'll be diplomatic and say, like, I'm not answering. Okay, you know what? These guys don't have to be. They're tearing us apart. That's what they're doing. They're tearing us apart. Okay, we have an appetizer here. It's called pani puri. So the pani is the water. Pani literally means water. It's like a seasoned water. Oh, it's a seasoned water. It's not like some regular water. And then the puri is this, like, little fried thing that she... It's like balls is what she referred to it as. And, like, you pour this into the pani. So you pour it in here. And then you gotta eat it, like, right away. How many seconds do you have before the pani puri becomes soggy? Maybe, like, 15. Yo, let me do this. It almost explodes like a gusher. I think this water is sweet. Usually, in India, it's really spicy. Hey, real quick. Can we introduce this chai team? I just remembered this. My only reference, guys. In Slumdog Millionaire, he's like, do you want to be a lonely chaiwala? Call center assistant from Mumbai. Chaiwala. What is chaiwala? I think there's so many of these terms that, like, a lot of Indian people don't even know. Right. You know, because it's, like, such a vast aspect. And you guys speak so many different languages, too, right? So as a South Indian, do you feel like you're represented well in Bollywood? Or is it, like, sometimes they make jokes? Or, like, they just don't get, like, the face time in it? I don't think that they do. Not enough. North India. When people talk about India, that's, like, the default. The culture of, like, what it is. Internationally known is North India. Right. And so I think that's where they really benefit from all this stuff. So I recently saw, like, that movie Lust Caution by Ang Lee. Yeah, the Chinese movie. We've seen a few, like, East Asian films become these, like, international sensations. With such a strong film culture, why have we not seen that? Maybe people are not ready to see it. I guess. Or the idea has not come across. Or it's not popular enough. In Japan, J-pop used to be way bigger than K-pop for many years. But what happened was J-pop didn't really, I guess, evolve into a hugely global product. Because J-pop more fed the local Japanese market. Because the market is big enough for where they could sustain a whole industry off of more local and, like, a very niche, like, overseas market. But K-pop, because Korea is not that big, they had to make it popular across the world. So I don't know if maybe that's part of it. Like, in Bollywood, they just have such a big internal market. That they don't need. They don't need. Are we supposed to put sugar in this? Yeah, if you want, yeah. I would like some sugar in my chocolate. These are idli nuggets, which are steamed lentil cakes tossed in house-blend spices. This is a chickpea battered fried chicken. The batter itself has a lot of spices. These are munchkins. They're like lentil hushpuppies. This is a potato cheese and ground beef dosa. These are the things that my mom or any South Indian mom makes for breakfast. This is puri, or it's called the big poof on the menu. It's a puffed wheat bread. That's a lamb pulao. North Punjabis eat this for breakfast all the time. How many of these have you had in your lifetime? That's a good question. Probably, like, a thousand. A thousand! It's like, every time your mom makes this, you're happy. Guys, you're North Indian. This is not your native cuisine. How many have you had in your life? Probably, like, a hundred of these. Easily a hundred. But this is more like a Sunday breakfast. So you're not like, you're necessarily, your parents wouldn't make it. You will go out and get it? We, no, we do go out and get it. We don't, we wouldn't make it at home. I cut it like as a lasagna. South Indian dosa. Mother, I already went in. I went in. Oh, man. Oh, that's good. It's crazy, it's not spicy. Okay, I'm a little disappointed. For people who have never had this, imagine, like, an arancini mixed with lasagna, but with Indian flavors. Almost like an Indian quesadilla. That's a good comparison. What's your favorite sauce? The lentil soup is definitely my favorite sauce. But you're right, you're right in that you need it all three, though. My parents don't really eat meat. So, like, a lot of the meat spices I'm not as familiar with. But it looks like it's just, like, fried. It looks like a pakoda a little bit, right? Are you allowed to eat meat around your parents? Here's the thing, man. I'm allergic to so much that my parents are like, fine, you know what I mean? But it's like, normally they would be like, no, you can't do that. Especially the beef, there's beef in that. Generally, like, Indian people are going to be like, no, you shouldn't do that. There's actually a story a couple years ago. I brought a slice, a pie, a pepperoni pizza home. My dad eyeballed me for so long. I was like, you want some? I literally told him that. He was so angry. He threw my pizza out. And then one time I had ikanori steak. It was so good, I loved it. My dad threw it away in the morning. I was like, so f***ed. Kerala fried chicken. Oh, man. Wow. That has a kick to it. This is actually, tastes more like a spicy mayo. Yeah. So this is more of the fusion, kind of westernized. That is your mint chutney. So this is like a idli nuggets, which is interesting because most South Indians are going to eat just straight up idli. So she has their spin on it where there's like some meat. She's calling it nuggets, which is nice. And then the dip, one of those things is called a sambar. That's like the classic thing. So I'm going to put idli nuggets. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. It's like healthy syrup. This is dal vada. It's like fried dal into like these like potato balls. Hell yeah. We got more. That's the very popular fish curry I was talking about. Wow. That looks spicy. It looks spicy, it's not. Because everyone's definition of that is spicy. I know, I know. Because I can't. Sometimes I don't know what to say when people come to Indian restaurants. They say like, oh, it's spicy. And I'm like, you're coming to an Indian restaurant. So, and I have a very fancy drink, which we got very popular for this summer. It's a rosé popsicle. The popsicle goes in and we make the popsicles in-house. So try it and let me know. I'm going in on this pulao. Pulao is one of my favorite dishes. I love pulao. Pulao is a mixed rice dish. It's actually not really fried in the same way that like Chinese do it in the wok. Yogurt, I think that's supposed to go on the pulao. So these are puris, which again, it's like a flatter version of what we ate before. Super good. It's super like light. Do I make a mitt out of it or? So it's like a triangle. It's kind of like a triangle, you know? And then you just go like this. Yeah, that's correct. Okay. And then you mean a little bit like the way people would eat in Jira in Ethiopia. Fish curry. There you go. Dude, this is so good. Wow. Yo, V, you grew up eating this? I did, yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Dude, it's super good. And you guys are Punjabi now. I see you guys passed the test, man. You gotta do this, this, this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta clean the whole plate, man. You gotta clean the whole plate. That like texture. That's it, yeah. Because if you don't, then your parents are going to come back to you. If I put some of the fish curry on that. Nah, it's fine. What about put some fish curry on the pani? That, I would get mad about it. Ooh, try it. You would get mad? Yeah, get him mad. Getting people more mad about it is more dangerous thing. Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. Hold on, man. That's why you... You about to feel the fire right now. All right, let me just... Now I'm like even more mad, bro. I know. This is like... We might have to cut it out. Pixelate this. It's like Frankenstein curry. Pixelate this, guys. Andrew is the food mixologist. That's one of his archetypes. All right. It's pretty good. Not bad. Is it okay? I mean, I told you it wasn't okay already. All right, you know what? V is like, yeah, I mean, just letting you know it's offensive. All right, you guys. Man, we are wrapping up just this spot. We got one other spot that we're gonna head to, but we got a lot more in-depth discussion, mostly about the Indian-American experience. All like the Indian-American problem. Put the camera on me. This man has damage, right? He has damage and we're gonna work through it. What's your guys' quick take on the Indian matchmaking show? Did you know there's a Netflix show about like Indian matchmaking? I'm going. Goodbye. All right, guys. We gotta move on to our next spot. Shout out to Ramya and Kaladi, but we got a second spot we're going to go to. Dude, we are on a South Indian prom. We are. Let's go. All right, you guys. We just walked a few blocks over and we're at Amisa, which is the only vegetarian spot. The owner's from South India. What rapper from New York does Jazz look like? Tony Yeo. Look at this guy. Look at this. The goatee and everything. Jazz, also, how is it wrapping with 50 cents? You never flipped on 50 though. No, no. 50 could always trust you. Loyalty is key. What can you tell me about the vada? It's like similar to like what we had at Kaladi. That's a staple as like a street food for sure. I could get this on the street of Telugu. Well, Telugu is a language, but you get it like Pune is a street. You get it there. I used to get made fun of so much for that being a street name, right? Pune. You probably got the Punjabi too, right? A little bit. It's funny because my dad's cousin lives in Pune. Yeah, yeah. And they're all like, that's a rich town. If you don't know, if you don't get the joke, good. And this is the idli, which we had like a fusion version of it at Kaladi, but this is what kind of what it's supposed to look like. What Andrew's going to do is he's going to put the mix in the burger and like you eat it kind of like a slider. Really? And you would do that even in India? Yeah, you would. So this is a bhel puri, it's basically like a, usually you can have it as a dry snack, but this is like more freshly made. Kind of cornflakes with veggies in it. Butter, yeah. Butter. Oh my god. I do want to stress too that like stuff like that, it's really easy to make at home. Like the, if you have like an instant pot or like the Migos crock pot, like you can like, it's like super easy to make that kind of stuff. Yo, that lentil soup is delicious. I didn't think a bean soup would be that good. How's the lassi? Yo man, tastes like home. Guys, David, try the saffron lassi. Delicious. This is next level. I'm on a, I'm in a different universe with this one. Got a little seed in there, boom. Okay, close it up. Dude, it almost looks like a, a Southern Atlanta, Georgia country roll. Yeah, and it's like, this is one of those things if you tell white people about, they're not going to be like, oh, I know exactly. So, so major points for having that. Major points, major points. Can you dip that in the lentil soup? Like, is that okay? That's better than what you did before. It's better than what you did before. Progress is progress. Verdict says? It's like a cornflake snack. You know, you make it at home. Yeah, it's possible. Do you appreciate it when somebody makes an honest effort to say the accent, like in the Indian way? I do. I always say that like, if people don't know how to say my name the right way, we're not friends. It's not that hard, number one. And then two, it's like, you got to have the respect to like, say the name the right way. Right, you got to put in that effort. It has like a meaning that I care about. If you make an effort to actually say it right, I'm okay with it. But if we make fun of it, and I blame it, dude, come on. Do you see me? What's your real name? I'm Jasdeep. Say it the right way, Jasdeep, bro. Yeah, my dad had put a little Western accent to it. You guys, we are looking at two different types of rices here from Southern India. This one is the lemon rice, right? Which is referred to as chitranna in my family. Almost looks like a poppy muffin. This is tamarind rice. Okay, yeah. So this is like another staple. They look nearly identical. Man, it was pretty good. It was, I think the tamarind flavor was like pretty light. For South Indian people, you're expected at your peak to become the CEO of Google. Sure, yeah. Jas, the most famous Punjabi right now is Nav. All the Punjabis are gonna get mad. There's no way it's Nav, dude. Now you guys are all coming to America, but it's not all Indians who can come to America. Right, it's like privileged people can come. Yeah, that's basically how it works. It's like the way that a lot of Indian people come is through the H1B. You have a job or you're going to college. That's how my parents came here. But that's not true for the Punjabis, right? They took the hard route to come here, you know? Can't really talk about it, but yeah. Okay. You know, crossing borders is tough, you know? Russell Peters said this in an interview. He said in Canada, the ratios are flipped. More people came in the hard way and they have fewer of the elites. And in America, we got more of the elites, fewer of the hard way. In Canada, when I go there, the Punjabis are kind of seen as the bodyguards, kind of the macho dudes. These are like kind of guys who could beat you up on the street. But then in America, like the image of Indians is pretty different. While it's funny because the image of like, for example, Cantonese, Chinese people in America, is more like working class. And then in Canada, Cantonese people all come from Hong Kong and they're more elite. What do you guys think is the future of Indian food in the Western world? I hope the future is like Hiladi. I think that's a super cool restaurant that is like authentic. And then I could see like me and my friends hanging out. And I think the way she described, she wants people to feel in there, which is like you get a bunch of drinks, you know, you're hanging out. I think she nailed it on what her objective was. That's what I wanted. Because I felt like she wanted just a fun environment, right? Yeah. I like a new twist to it. I felt like she achieved it. Don't let other people define who you have to be. Not even your parents. You can find successful role models that mimic your life philosophy, but you've got to look deep, deep cut enough. I don't know. For some people, they need to see somebody who looks like them be outside of the box and be successful so they can follow their footsteps. Did you guys know that Tim Grover, Michael Jordan's trainer is actually Punjabi? No. That's crazy. He's born in Punjab. His name is Tim Grover Singh. To be fair to Tim Grover, I don't think he benefited too much from being it. We could have heard him. Yeah. For example, you're talking about names. Like Kamala Harris refers to herself as like Kamala Harris, right? But her name is Kamala Harris, you know? So like even to that degree, she's kind of let this name turn into like a more sort of like Anglo pronunciation. I think it's very frustrating for us to see people who are supposed to represent us at this like elected level. Like Indians are just waiting to have a leader that people are proud of. You just want to see people like at least acknowledge that this is a community that exists. But some people would argue why you're giving Tim Grover a pass. Yeah. Tim Grover is not a politician. He's not like a pop star. He doesn't claim to be this like representative for anybody. There's Siraj Patel who just ran here and unfortunately lost. But he definitely has. And you know, there's a few at like the congressional level. But at the national politics level, this is why people have a problem in our community with Kamala Harris. What would you say when people say, Oh, V, you're being too picky. You know, if you don't demand that kind of respect for your people now, or just like you're never going to get it. All minorities in general. It's always a fight to like kind of explain to people what you want and why what you want is important. Pave the path that you want using advice from them. Oh, sorry. We got to pause that. David's dosa radar went off. Continue letting them know. All right. Record scratch. Edit. Continue letting them know. Yeah. While we have this gigantic, shut the game down to your dosa. They just put it on the table. I don't know if that's more Indian style. You can study and do well at school. And if you spend an hour every day doing music, doing graphic design, whatever you want to do, just an hour every single day, you'll get good at that. And you can do both. You can like be like, Mom, Dad, I'm a great student. Also, I'm really good at this other thing. But eventually, when you grow that habit, you're saying that you'll just stop. If you're at the level where you don't even know, it's like you can realize that nothing is all or nothing. Like if you're young, everything is available. You can just work at it and it'll be fine. Don't accept the role people want to give you. Yeah, I'm Indian. Indian people are cool. Indian people can be sexy. Indian people can be whatever they want. If you do that, just never let people define who you are. Just know you're Indian American, but don't let the stereotypes get to you. Just do what you want. And as long as you're happy with it, that's what I think. But man, thank you guys so much for being a part of this. What was your guys' favorite thing? Hypothetically, what were we doing this whole day? I'm still going to dosa and the idli would have been my favorite two things. Yo, bhel puri forever, man. So good. I'm going with the pav bhaji. That's my pick. I'm gonna go with the idli in the lentil soup. I thought this lentil soup was amazing. Oh, I forgot to get the last... We're gonna do this question and be out. Bollywood. I'm not a huge Bollywood guy, but there are some movies that... Three Idiots, Lagaan, bro. Hari said that South Indians don't watch Bollywood. Is that true? I mean, that's more true because there's Tollywood. There's Telugu Hollywood. There's their own industry. Yeah, but I'm into some of the Bollywood movies, man. Some of them are good. Give them a chance. Yo, is Bollywood like... I don't watch it, but my parents will love it. They're like, Jess, why don't you be like them? I mean, my biggest takeaway from this whole conversation is they tried to tear us apart, and we stood strong. We did it. I think that like a lot of us, all minorities have like a lot of similarities. And I think it's super important to like talk through them. And I think what you guys are doing is awesome. Yo, huge shout out to Vivek, man. I appreciate you. Yeah, thank you guys so much. Jazz, appreciate you. Thank you guys. I'm not playing off any pre-existing controversy, but there was like 20 videos I watched about North versus South Indian. And then we got really hype. We really wanted to see a fist fight. So my Instagram is at Indian Maisel. So it's like marvelous. This is Maisel, except Indian. Indian Maisel. And I host a podcast called 9 to 5 Cast, which is about like workplace culture. We have some other stuff that I'm going to talk to these guys about to get some help, but some YouTube stuff maybe coming. Oh, okay. Jazz, where can they find you in the city? My Instagram is Jazzismooth, J-A-Z-Z-I-S-S-M-O-O-T-H. You got a mixtape dropping? Yeah, yo, coming soon. Yo, to the streets of New York City. In the comments down below, let us know what your favorite South Indian dish is. And let us know if you guys would like to see us do this similar type of video with any other culture. And I hope you guys really enjoyed that video. And I hope you guys made it to the end because there was a lot of hilarious stuff that was said and insightful stuff and smart stuff and great discussion. So thank you for making it this far. And until next time, we out. Yo, Jazz, man, we got the desserts. This is the end slate. Shout out to you guys for watching. I appreciate it, man. We just threw this in. We don't even have a mic on. You don't even know about it. Yo, what is that? That's the vegan rice pudding right here. Right, because everything here is vegan. Yeah. And I got a... That's the regular kheer. Not bad. Is this mango? There's no coconut. This is a vegan version. Oh, snap! Unexpected, man. Last but not least, man, of course. This is a Punjabi sweet, right? Yeah. But it kind of went pan-India, right? Yo, this is like... Is it crazy to say that the two... It's a goat of desserts. It's like, man, this is like... Between this and the warrior-ness, gulab jamun. Oh, that's good.