Comment by pcthrowaway
2 years ago
While I disagree with the above poster's attitude, I agree with the point about food tasting different depending on where you are.
Perhaps you can get relatively authentic Indian food (ignoring the variations in Indian cuisine for a second) in the U.S. and Canada, compared to India (I've traveled India for comparison). Because there are tons of import markets in both countries to get all the same ingredients.
But Indian food in Greece definitely has a Greek flavour to it, because it's quite hard to find the proper ingredients to make more authentic Indian food. They used feta instead of paneer!
I encountered this with "Mexican" food in Germany, which—anecdotally speaking, uniformly tasted of Maggi-brand chicken bouillon.
This is often intentional as it's a way of bridging a foreign cuisine to the local palate - which feta certainly would do. I don't personally like it but I think that's why it sometimes happens. It's not very difficult to make paneer so anyone that is serious about replicating proper Indian flavors could do it.