Dabbawallas

[Busboy]

Interesting piece about a delicious Mumbai tradition. Once again a "slow food" tradition trumps McD's and even expense account cooking. A trade that seems almost as outmoded as the buggywhip business is actually growing 5-10% a year. This strikes me as good news.

Gaurav Bamania, a hedge fund analyst who works in one of the many downtown office towers that now dominate the skyline of India’s financial capital, could easily eat lunch at one of the city’s better restaurants. Instead, Mr. Bamania, 26, follows a practice dating back over a century to the early years of British rule: he has a hot meal, lovingly cooked at home by his grandmother, and delivered to his desk every workday.

[Fat Guy]

The dubbawalas are fascinating. I wish we had a system like that here in New York.

It's worth noting, as well, that a little over four years ago Monica Bhide wrote about the dubbawalas in the Daily Gullet. The story is here and there's a discussion topic here.

[I_call_the_duck]

Not to mention an article in the NYT from a year ago.

Philly has something close--Tiffin--which I have yet to try, but from the thread, sounds great.

[Smithy]

There was a piece about the Mumbai lunch deliveries from home on The Splendid Table sometime back, too. I think in that piece they were called tiffinwallahs. Can't find it in the archives, without more search time than I have. It does sound like a great system.

[onedaylingers]

It does sound like a great system.

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I have to say though, as lovely a tradition as it sounds, I interviewed several of my Indian grad school mates, and they all paint pretty bleak pictures of the women in the family virtually chianed to the kitchen -- there're barely done clearing up breakfast dishes, before they've to start prepping lunch, and then dinner!

[Smithy]

It does sound like a great system.

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I have to say though, as lovely a tradition as it sounds, I interviewed several of my Indian grad school mates, and they all paint pretty bleak pictures of the women in the family virtually chianed to the kitchen -- there're barely done clearing up breakfast dishes, before they've to start prepping lunch, and then dinner!

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I hadn't thought of that. Suddenly, sandwiches sound much more appealing.

[Carrot Top]

Extending out a bit from the tradition of dabbawallas, food sent daily from Mom's kitchen, now there is food sent daily from Dad's kitchen. To the dogs.

Home-Cooked Dinner Delivery for Dogs in Bhopal

Rice, meat, soup, these are just some of the dishes that are on the menu for a dog's takeaway service in India's central Bhopal city.

The owner of the catering service, Prakash Verma, decided to set it up after seeing that some dogs were suffering from a poor diet.

Verma cooks the food in his home, and buys the fresh meat daily, from the market.

Lucky dogs.

[foodie52]

When I was in elementary school, I walked home for lunch every day. My mother's schedule revolved around my lunch hour.

Lots of schools in Switzerland still practice this: the kids go home for a hot lunch and then return to school 2 hours later. It's expected that mom will be home for the kids. Very different from the USA, isn't it?

[pennylane]

Same here - growing up in Pakistan. School was from 7:00 a.m. to 12:30 (it got too hot after that) so we were home for lunch. I never had time for breakfast so spent the half-starved morning dreaming of what there might be for lunch when I got home. The margins of my notebooks were filled with etchings of hamburgers and slices of pizza dripping with cheese. Sometimes if I really craved something in particular I tried to send my mother telepathic messages to make it for me. Call it selective memory, but more often than not I got home to find that very meal waiting for me on the table.