Unity In Diversity

An appreciation for regional cuisine has emerged across India, most evidently in restaurants

- Charmaine O’Brien

India does have a national cuisine. I confidently assert this after 20 years of exploring and writing about Indian food. This work has taken me to almost every corner of the country, into all kinds of kitchens from rural to royal. I have had conversations with hundreds of domestic and professional cooks, and enjoyed countless meals.

I am aware of a particular decisive, nationalistic ideal about food that has emerged over recent years. It is not my intention to feed this (pun unintended), rather to defuse it. India’s national cuisine is her regional cuisines, every one of them—from the kalari kulcha of Jammu and the chhena poda of Orissa to the raw fish and wild greens soup called pasa of Arunachal Pradesh and the ker sangri of Rajasthan. They have been developed over thousands of years. Every caste and creed has made a unique contribution to creating a food culture so varied and finely nuanced that it makes up the world’s most diverse cuisine. In my opinion, it is also the most remarkable and complex food culture in the world. Its unparalleled combinations of flavours and textures make it the most exciting to eat.

The first time I came to India I did not come for the food. My only experience of it had been in Indian restaurants outside India, serving dishes from predominantly the northern part of the country, with a ‘chicken vindaloo’ and a ‘Madras prawn curry’ thrown in for good measure. Each of the dishes, all called curry, was almost indistinguishable from the other, made with too much oil and chili. The homogeneity of these offerings suggested to me that this was Indian food—a ‘national cuisine’. What a revelation it was to discover otherwise.