The Kanna Know-How

The Kanna Curry House along Jalan Gasing has a feature I don't often encounter in Indian and Malay (and, come to think of it, Chinese) restaurants. From the moment we sat down - in fact even before we sat down - it was gastronomical warfare all the way.

The banana leaves were on the table before we could even pull out our chairs. Barely two seconds warming the seats, the three kinds of veg were splatted down. Not forty seconds of restaurant orientation passed and a guy had come over carrying a tray with half a dozen meat and fish dishes. I take four steps towards the sink and a dude was offering to special-fry seafood of at dazzling variety.

I almost felt shy with our meager order of two banana-leaf rice, one tosai and a small plate of fish. And each time a new tray was brought over, a mild yet definite temptation arose to try it out. Towards the end of our meal, as was the case at the start, a tray of soya-bean jelly was brought over. It was all I could do to say no.

Now, this was a banana leaf restaurant, but the way service was conducted, it could've been a dim-sum parlour! (Hence, I'm sure, the huge success of dim-sum places; as with Kanna, when the food is thrust in your face so often, the percentage of 'conversions' naturally rise by quite a bit!)

And then I thought back to the restaurants I usually frequented, especially those near my apartment. 

How come no one goes around the tables with freshly cooked delicious goodies, offering it to us? Most of the time they don't even tell you what they have; at Kanna, they showed it to ya!

Why do so many other eateries think customers would be  sufficiently enticed by the name of the dish being uttered? And why spend so much money on posters and fancy menus, when it isn't going to complemented by real food in all their tasty splendour being presented to guests?