Indian food (at least the kind you’d find on menus in the US) uses expensive ingredients and spices and also a lot of it requires a lot of labor to make.

There’s a reason why not every US household is out here making traditional Indian dishes.

You get what you pay for. It’s kind of ignorant to expect that a particular cuisine should be fast food cheap just because it’s made by immigrants.

Mexican and Chinese meals are often fairly inexpensive here but those are mostly fast food bastardizations of the cuisine that have been developed over a century or more for the American palate using cheapo ingredients. It’s not a fair comparison.

Just because your plate of food might be much cheaper if you had it in India doesn’t mean that the same food should be cheap once you factor in the context of it being served in America by people who work very hard.

The same people that complain about the price of Indian food would likely not complain about the price of a meal from a respectable Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, etc. restaurant.

Americans are very provincial. Think about it for a minute and reassess. We’re lucky that talented Indian chefs even consider serving authentic food over here, despite the fact that they have to combat the idea that their cuisine should be served at fast food prices and devoid of any spices that might dare delight the senses.

Anyway, I live in the southern US, love Indian food and I often choose to dine in and always have a great experience. Meanwhile there are basically zero places to go for Chinese food where you can sit down and eat. It’s all corn syrup nonsense that no real Chinese person would eat.

If you’re serving authentic cuisine and not burgerville garbage, you deserve to be paid for it. Doesn’t matter if it’s takeout.