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Should a cook serve food that they would never eat themselves?

Does it ring a bell, growing up when you had a guest in your home they always received the royal treatment?

If you knew you were having a guest over, you would shop that day for the freshest ingredients and never cut corners on quality.

But the puzzle with most restaurants is the lack of quality ingredients they are using which are filled with chemicals and never found in our own kitchens at home. Is that fair?

Some are for low quality ingredients and some are not. But the striking thing is that this division of opinion has much to do with how the person was brought up, educated, and cultured.

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You are far more likely to be against artificial ingredients if you were brought up in a strict dietary household. Dieticians and medical professionals tend to believe that these ingredients must be ousted. However, others tend to see them as inherently good, and eating the freshest ingredients is not always better. These artificial ingredients tend to last longer and you can feed more people to make the world a better place.

However, what we found was a happy medium of organic fresh foods and foods that still have high quality, but don’t necessarily need to be organic to enjoy the flavors these foods bring.

In fact, the best part of my day is my morning ritual at the local markets talking to vendors and suppliers about the quality of the ingredients I might be putting on the table. Just like the old tradition of shopping for guests and preparing a fresh meal the day of serving.

The fresher the ingredients, the better the food would taste. Building a foundation on lesser quality ingredients, no matter how much you salt it, would always be at fault.

When we can, we choose organic herbs and spices because it brings in more flavor and it is overall much tastier. We also grind these herbs and spices in-house because the smell of fresh ground spices brings euphoria and exhilaration to the building. Although the work is hard, it brings more fulfillment then exhaustion.

Not only does it taste good, but it is healthier for you. The simplest dish has up to 12 different herbs and spices while the more complex dishes can have up to 26.

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These spices consist of ginger, garlic, turmeric, and cardamom that tends to help with digestion, gives antioxidants, anti-inflammatory properties, while in some cases it lowers blood pressure and heart disease.

I am not a medical professional, although if you have ever had Indian food that has given you heartburn, it was likely that dish had low-quality ingredients mixed with low quantity of that ingredient, giving you that less than desirable feeling.

Here at Taj Mahal, I eat my own cooking and my heart would have given out long ago if this type of food gave me heartburn.

Case in point, I made it a policy that I would never serve anything on my customers’ table that I would not serve my children. I can’t promise you that they will eat all of their vegetables, but I would still be proud of the dish I placed in front of them.

When we start cooking it is my wife Farha who makes 90% of the dishes (the other 10% is me) and she makes it with the same love she has been feeding our children for years. You can tell, because when you look at her hands you can see the amount of work she has put into our home and restaurant.

The Taj Mahal is ingredients first over cutting corners and our product demonstrates high quality. I guarantee you are going to love the food here and I can’t wait to see you.

Sohail Ishaq