... Indian food is pretty easy to reproduce though (and it is delicious) so I can't think of any use for imported jeets ...
Agreed entirely. In fact, the West is the reason why Indian food is so good.
It's the same deal in Cuba, India, most of China, etc. - the food is good
in theory, but their shitty supply chains, idiotic approaches to food prep, and terrible ingredient quality cripple their ability to make their own cuisine. In Cuba, their lack of sufficient food resources often cripple their ability to make good dishes for anyone but visitors (this is not their fault, they try their best). China has the same issue, mainly because they continue to be absolute idiots about meat prep (they tend to cut chicken up whole, leaving the bones in, reducing the entire culinary experience to picking bones out of your teeth) and because their entire culture is still crippled by starvation-era "fuck you, got mine" mentalities that incentivize endless corner-cutting. India is the same but somehow worse: the meat is at best gristly and poorly-prepared, the eating-with-your-hands thing is asinine and sloppy (I've done it dozens of times in India and found it idiotic each time, you literally have to rush off to a sink the SECOND you're done eating), the flavors are overmuch at best and slop at worst.
The West fixes all that. Miami does Cuban food better than Cuba can, purely due to ingredients availability alone. Legitimate Chinese food in the United States makes food in most of China (outside of major T1 cities) look poverty-tier. The 'jeets here in the U.S. also have the ability to make their own slop better than they could back home, due in no small part due to better ingredients and the possibility of being backhanded by a health inspector.
Stated more simply: one of America's great superpowers is that we steal the cool ideas from other countries and make it our own, like a giant cultural Borg cube. We have stolen India's flavor profiles without stealing their idiotic approach to eating and dangerous approach to food prep. We win.
