Eating for Unity

If you’re in Melbourne on February 24, Mia Northrop would like you to eat at a local Indian restaurant—and many Australians have pledged to do so. Northrop started Vindaloo Against Violence to show support for the beleaguered Indian community in Australia. She began VAV with this pitch:

“How cool would it be if Melbourne displayed a show of force by all going out and eating Indian food on a certain night, to embrace and show solidarity with our local Indian community? Let’s do it!”

Around this time, Malaysia faced a series of ugly incidents, where severed cow’s heads were placed in temples and severed pig’s heads in mosques. These incidents have left the country shaken and divided. That’s when a bunch of Malaysians started the Reject Cow and Pig Head Racists! Fish Head Curry for Unity!!! Facebook group. “Let’s show the country how to use fish head to unite a people…. I’m talking about the goodness of fish head curry!” Urging fellow Malaysians to go out and eat at their favourite kari kepala ikan restaurant on February 5 and 6, the Fish Head Unity movement was a slightly more bizarre way to make Northrop’s point.

These two groups go against the usual trend of food politics. When the Danish cartoons incident happened, radical Islamic groups suggested that Danish cookies be renamed, in protest. The name they came up with, “Roses of the Prophet Mohammad cookies”, was unfortunately not likely to catch on. A more celebrated example is the case of ‘French fries’; with US opinion strongly anti-French when France refused to support America’s stance on the Iraq war, diners and restaurants across the country renamed French fries “freedom fries”.

The choice of vindaloo and fish head curry as unifying dishes is interesting. Vindaloo is found in India chiefly on the menus of Goan restaurants—it’s seen here as a region-specific dish, and Indians are often puzzled at the ubiquity and popularity of the “vindaloo” in the UK and Australia. In these places, it serves as shorthand for a spicy, flaming-hot lamb, beef or pork curry, and also as shorthand for Indian food in general.

It was one of the first “colonial” dishes to be adopted in India. Introduced by the Portuguese, vindaloo was a corruption of “carne de vinho e alhos”—meat cooked in wine vinegar and garlic. The Goans took this rough but satisfying stew and added in place of the vinegar, a tamarind-and-black pepper concoction, chillies, mustard oil—and when it began to be brewed in monasteries, palm toddy vinegar. The best vindaloos I’ve had in Goa have never been in the five-stars or even the better-known restaurants: this is classic fish-and-curry restaurant fare, and it’s best to ask the locals where to get the best vindaloo in their village.

Fish head curry in Malaysia has a wonderful and controversial history, claimed by three key communities. The Muthu Curry restaurant claims that fish head curry made its appearance on Malaysian menus in the 1950s, after a South Indian cook found nothing but leftover fish heads and used them in a traditional dish to serve a table of late diners.

Nonsense, says the Chinese community, claiming that this was a staple of Nyonya cuisine that became popular in the 1950s as late-night street food—it was originally the favourite meal of chefs finishing up for the night. Singapore also puts in a claim—but then some sources say that fish head curry found its way to Singapore courtesy the local Malayali community. And to confuse matters, one of Malaysia’s oldest cookbooks has a recipe for a milder form of fish head curry with Indonesian influences that dates back to the 1950s. By choosing a Portuguese dish as the emblem of Indian food, the UK and Australia have long avoided the heated arguments that would erupt if you chose tandoori chicken or the dosa as the quintessential Indian food. By choosing fish head curry, the Malaysian community has a dish that unites everyone in their eagerness to claim it for themselves. And given a choice between marching for peace or eating for unity, I know what would be the more satisfying option.

[The author is a freelance writer and editor]