Aren’t you tired of visiting fancy new restaurants, ordering food for you and your friends, only to find out that somehow the dishes ordered aren’t enough to satiate everyone’s hunger. The way the dish is served might seem like the quantity is a lot, then how is it that a dish that’s supposed to be consumed by three, is hardly enough to be consumed by two? Is there a way that restaurants have been fooling diners along in to thinking they are getting a lot but actually not giving enough? Have you ever left a restaurant feeling under-fed even after you’ve ordered a good quantity of food, that certainly looked a lot when it came to the table? Next time something like this happens to you, don’t blame your appetite for it.
In a shocking turn of events, food bloggers from various cities across the country have exposed the many techniques which food and beverage industry players have deployed to make you order more quantity of food. On the surface, when a bowl of butter chicken comes to the table it might look like a big serving. However, what looks like enough food for the table isn’t really enough food and food bloggers have found this out. Using a hack that tells you just how much food you can expect to eat from a dish that overtly looks like it’s enough for two - three people, these food bloggers are helping their followers to become smart diners. Here’s one such video of a food blogger Swag Se Doctor:
In the video the blogger can be seen with a spoon. He has ordered a dal tadka that has come in a copper bucket or balti. This has become a very common utensil to serve food in restaurants. In fact restaurants have started naming their dishes with the name balti to indicate that one will be getting the dish served in a balti. A prime example of this is the balti murgh - a creamy chicken preparation served in a small balti - that you’ll find on the menus of restaurants across the city. The blogger takes the spoon and puts it in a vertical direction, measuring the length of the copper balti that the dish has come in. With his other hand he marks the height of the balti and holds the mark steadfast. In the other part of the video, the blogger proceeds to put the spoon, still holding the height mark of the balti steadfast with his other other hand. Upon insertion of the spoon in to the dal balti, he finds that the dish that the copper utensil holds is not equal to the height of the utensil. The song thoda hai thode ki zaroorat hai, plays in the background and the blogger has captioned the post, ‘Bahut Thoda Hai.’ In the two parts of the video - one where he shows the real height of the utensil versus the actual volume of the dish held in that utensil - has been captioned expectation versus reality.
The reason for this difference is that the balti utensils that are commonly used to serve food around restaurants have a thick base of metal that elevates the balti but isn’t part of the hollow balti. Next time you truly want to know the amount of dish you are going to be served, use this hack and you’ll be good to go. Happy dining!
