Saturday for lunch we hit a local Indian buffet. I got one of my kids to go along to try it, and despite finding it a bit too spicy, he had a good time. The cool thing about the place we visited was how authentic it was. Most of the patrons were Indian, and the food was all called by it’s Indian names.

It also was authentic in it’s cultural expectations. As Americans at a buffet we blasted through multiple plates of food and were finished in 20 minutes or so. The proprietor came over to offer us more water and we said “no thanks” as we were finished and getting ready to go. He then told us that we didn’t eat enough and that we needed to stay longer and try more things. He asked us kindly to try more of their deserts and sit and relax longer, and that it would make him happy if we tried more.

What can you say to that? You can say “Ok, let’s go check out more food!” It’s obvious that we have a very different cultural expectation of how long we should take to eat, and we hadn’t met his expectation. It was a fascinating thing to see played out, and frankly, really brought home a lesson in cultural differences to my son.

Needless to say, we grabbed some deserts and they were really neat. My son loved this sour yogurt and rice pudding, which I gobbled down some sweet mango yogurt type of dish. It was really yummy, and was a great way to end a meal of spicy foods. The entire experience was a lot of fun, and I can see us paying this establishment a visit more often.