ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 14, 1996 TAG: 9610140103
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW DELHI, INDIA
SOURCE: Associated Press
McDonald's is coming to India, but leaving its all-beef patties behind.
Officials announced Friday that the first Indian outlet of the giant U.S.-based chain will open in a New Delhi shopping center Sunday. It will be the only McDonald's restaurant in the world with no beef on the menu.
Some 80 percent of Indians are Hindu, a religion whose adherents don't eat beef and believe cows are a sacred symbol.
``Here, McDonald's has been very sensitive to our culture and brought out totally new products,'' said Vikram Bakshi, an Indian real estate magnate who formed a partnership with McDonald's to open the New Delhi restaurant.
Instead of the Big Mac, Bakshi's menu features the Maharaja Mac - ``two all-mutton patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun.''
For the strictest Hindus, who eat no meat at all, there are rice-based patties flavored with peas, carrots, red pepper, beans, coriander and other spices. The vegetable burgers are deep fried, emerging from their oil bath as crisp as the Middle Eastern chick-pea snack known as falafel and tasting vaguely spicy.
Pork also is banned from the menu. Muslims - more than 110 million of whom live in India - believe pork is unclean.
McDonald's, which has nearly 20,000 restaurants in more than 95 countries, has adapted its menu to local tastes elsewhere in the world. Thai customers can sample Samurai Pork Burgers topped with a sweet barbecue sauce, and burgers in Japan are garnished with a fried egg.
But the effort to appeal to Indians goes a step further, perhaps because the market here is so volatile.
LENGTH: Short : 40 linesby CNB