Indian Home Diner Butter Chicken

What used to be the Indian Home Diner on Glebe Point Road, Glebe

RESPONDING TO PERSISTENT HECKLING, THE Right’s Michelle Rowland, speaking for the amendment, said the most popular last name in her electorate was “Singh” and that for many, the uranium issue was a reason for Indians not to vote Labor. The inner city contingent that favoured the ban was out of touch, she said.
“Just because you order the butter chicken from Indian Home Diner in Glebe Point Road doesn’t make you an expert.”

If you didn’t have the privilege of attending the most recent National Conference of the Australian Labor Party as I did, you can take away (ahem) from this quip everything you can possibly need to know about the event.

As Andrew Elder helpfully pointed out the dish has the same connotations as Latte for leftists: butter chicken is a watered-down, dairy-stacked, over-sugared, sold-to-people-who-don’t-really-like-curry dish. More to the point, it’s fundamentally chicken.

Labor Party Conferences always leave me profoundly reflective. If I were supposed to maintain rage and enthusiasm for the call of the deformed workers’ party, I can’t ever quite manage either. Or passion for power I can never muster?

When I was actually young enough to be in Young Labor I remember thinking it pathetic that the dominant Right simply used food- and drink-based epithets to justify any policy offensive to the Left and ramming the vote through with numbers. Apart from latte leftie, there’s chardonnay socialist, mung-sprout eating hippy, tofu munching Trot—there’s no end to the consumptive signifiers. Things haven’t improved since the early 2000s, only the abuse has started encompassing a bit of reference to white peoples’ ethnic appropriation: that can only be a good thing.

Whichever side you’re on, you’ve got to admit it’s funny. What could better argue for the foreign policy and proliferation consequences of export of uranium to a non-NNPT signatory country than the abuse of inner city Left faction members by a lawyer parachuted into a Western Sydney seat?

For the record, I’m more of a lamb rogan josh and longneck of stout kind of a man.

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Mindy · 6 December 2011, 10:01 · #

Well hmpf. I like curry and I like butter chicken. I have just found that you are more likely to get a reasonable butter chicken from a food court than another curry. In a nice Indian restaurant (I’m looking at you Indian Aroma Cronulla) I will order and eat as many different curries as I can because they are all fabulous.

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thewetmale · 6 December 2011, 10:26 · #

Would it be too obvious to suggest the lesson to learn is that you become an expert when you prefer the beef vindaloo from the food court Indian chain shops?

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FDB · 9 January 2012, 13:03 · #

Whereas ordering the malai kofta with garlic naan would give you leave to pontificate on anything you like.

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