The Dhaba – Tempe, Arizona
I joked with our friend Kris Lincoln about the irony of introducing an Indian to Indian cuisine. I’m going to pin that paradox on Christopher Columbus. Legend has it that Columbus used the term “Indian” to refer to the original inhabitants of the American continent. It’s widely believed (though more romanticized than accurate) that he used the term “Indian” because he was convinced he had landed in “The Indies” (Asia) where he hoped to discover a new source of wealth, Whether attributable to confusion or an education system that often perpetuates mistaken beliefs, the label “Indian” has stuck. That misnomer is widely used across the fruited plain–even by many indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere. In the 1960s, the term…