REAL Indian food is insanely good... The problem is the fat. Good curry contains gobs of butter.
I don’t think it’s all butter. I know they use ghee (butter) but they could just as well use canola oil or a mix of the two. I use canola in my curry and I use about 6 tablespoons of oil for more than 5 quarts of curry. I think that is plenty of oil since the man purpose is to get the flavor of the whole spices in the oil. I think restaurants can easily cut back on ghee.
I think a lot of the fat from restaurant curries comes from yogurt and fatty meat. I use low or no fat yogurt for my curry and trim up my meat alot. Some Indian dishes have cream and others I have seen have sour cream. A lot of fat there and again a home cook can cut down on some of it. But still there is something about a dish with heavy cream. ;)
Not necessarily — if you try southern Indian dishes, they are far healthier than punjabi/northern Indian dishes.