Poverty or greed: Would we remain victims forever?

Years ago, Juway’s Café was the place which offered my best Spaghetti Bolognaise and Spaghetti Carbonara like how The Keyolhu now offers my best lemonade.

But some of my friends have a reservation:

“Juwayria ge echehi meereh noono (sic)”, says a Maldivian friend from my high school days, meaning that she has heard that some people don't find Juway's food appetizing anymore.

Another friend opined that Seera's Chicken Rice ("baiy parcel") is not tasty anymore.

"I suppose the original recipe maker may have instructed the staff, who are now mostly expatriates, to follow her instructions but they are not following her as instructed?" she commented further.

Another friend went further, stating that expats have implemented their own "twist", applying the tastes form the culinary arts from their countries of origin.

"If, for instance, Bangladeshis, Indians, Nepalese, and Sri Lankans were to make Maldivian 'hedhikaa' (snacks) to suit their own needs, would those hedhikaa reflect the same taste as snacks produced according to the Maldivian traditional formula?" she opined.

So, why am I concerned, you might ask?

It has to do with the fact that my favorite dishes seem to be vanishing from the surface of Maldives (alongside the threat from climate changes and its accompanied rising sea levels) as some of my Maldivian friends make remarks that border on racism, expressing they feel scared that “foreigners” seem to be overtaking all aspects of our food industry – the remaining cultural aspect of our idyllic life after the hospitality industry seems to have fallen “completely in to the hands of multinational corporations”.

Am I being xenophobic? Is this something that I need to be afraid of in reality?

Not really – if you take into account that brands that were once oh-so-American are no longer, um, well, American.

As I quoted in that blogpost, from "STREET INSIDER", "overseas investors have played a big part in keeping these companies moving forward. Without them stepping in, some of them may have ceased to exist altogether."

Likewise, if not for international hotel chains taking over, I doubt some of Maldivian resorts would survive now.

It seems to be true and applicable to Maldives' businesses as well.

“Simply apply this to our catering industry,” a Maldivian friend told me.

So while free market economics seem to both save and destroy industries wholescale, should we inject certain aspects of Socialism into our economy? Is it something to be really scared of? And by that, I mean, the government interfering to save big business from going bankrupt. Is that the reason why the United States is in a perpetual state of freaking out because their populace keeps feeling their religiously worshipped Capitalism is under constant attack?

And how do we Maldivians relate this to our own state of economic affairs?

The friend who criticized expats taking over our eateries made it sound like a foreign invasion by colonialist powers or alien forces from outer space and I am not going to blame Gen Z for this attitude of hers.

However, I wondered whether Maldivians who don’t want their “traditional” food to be “tempered and experimented” to give a taste in “novel and exotic ways” may be unhappy; if so they have the choice to make their own food at home. Or instruct their “foreign maid” (who also serves as cook, nanny, servant, etc.) to make food according to the Maldivian family’s likes. Nobody is stopping them. And likewise, I have the power and freedom to cook my own meals according to my tastes.

According to another friend, there are also other “simple issues”.

“All expats are connected. For instance, take the case of the oil that’s used for frying in resorts which are sent to be discarded. These are delivered by expats (working in those islands) to restaurants in (the Maldives’ capital island) Male’ which then are used by expat chefs and cooks to use multiple times because this would ‘save’ expenditure and cost of refreshing oil every time they want to fry something,” this friend said.

“However, don’t blame them. We South Asians are poor. Everybody in the Indian Subcontinent is living in poverty. We are all in this together – in this boat which could sink if we don’t collaborate and give breathing space to each other to live,” she added.

Another friend says that many restaurateurs have left the business for other “options” such as migrating to other countries after handing over the restaurant business to expats who may or may not follow the recipe that the Maldivian owner had passed on to them, which this friend says, is the reason why dishes at Juway’s Kitchen and Seera do not taste as they did before.

All this time I was not deliberately avoiding Juway’s “new” outlet “Juway’s Kitchen” at Bluekiyaa Magu (street) after “Juway’s Café” on Maaveyo Magu was closed down: I was spoilt for choice because so many restaurants and cafes and other food outlets were springing up all over the whole Maldives’ archipelago and it was only recently I decided to post photos of food I taste on my Instagram account like a lot of people seem to be doing.

Why I suddenly went to Juway’s outlet recently, which she had changed the name from “Café” to “Kitchen”, was because a Maldivian friend said that Juway’s “Roaskuri Kukulhu Pack, Authentic Addu-style Roasted Chicken, Served with Theluli Folhi (Maldivian Style Puri) or 4 Soft Naan” (pictured) tastes “amazing”.

And not only that, the signature name given to it sounds very “organic” like “Addu roas kuri kukulhu” rather than pronouncing it in the English way as “roasted” to indicate that there is no “pretense”.

For me it sounded simply “out of this world”. So I was dying to have this awesome gastronomical experience myself. So finally I visited “Juway’s Kitchen”.

After making me aware of Juway’s new outlet, which has now become “famous” for Juway’s native Addu atoll style food, this friend says she can’t get enough of Juway’s Maldivian style “Puri”.

However, there’s something to keep in mind if you are planning to order that dish if you haven’t already: Call it my stupidity but since in Maldives there exists cafes and restaurants named “Kitchen”s, where we can “dine in”, like K Kitchen in North Male’ atoll Kaashidhoo island, a false impression when you apply this concept to Juway’s Kitchen is that I was taken a bit off-guard when I found that there is only one single table for two which I suspect is just a waiting table for anyone who might want to sit temporarily until the staff hands over the prepared food.

And it doesn’t take an hour as some might suggest: The cashier told me it would take around 25 minutes and it turned out true to his words.

And if you rather prefer takeaway than have their staff do a delivery for you, Juway’s Kitchen offers you a discount of MVR 20 (USD 1.29) and I got it, making an otherwise a meal pack costing MVR 149 (USD 9.66) to cost me MVR 129 (USD 8.36) which perhaps didn’t result in me wasting my time going there after all as TIME IS MONEY.