India’s food plate and palate have changed – but anxieties old and new persist

Food, contrary to the mythologising by TV shows, social media and food magazines, is not something that necessarily brings people together. It can also be divisive – much like love or marriage.

Most people have strong ideas of what constitutes good food or the cuisine they like. The term “comfort food” denotes how food memories from childhood are coded into us. Food is elemental to how we live and celebrate our lives (and even mourn deaths). In most cultures and religions around the world, certain foods are proscribed on specific occasions or conversely are considered celebratory on others.

Until economic liberalisation in the 1990s, the culture of eating out was restricted to a small cosmopolitan elite in India and the working classes. Most people did not have the kind of disposable income seen today.

There were fine-dining establishments, five-star hotels and clubs that were restricted to particular members from the upper classes.

Then there were roadside eateries, clustered around government offices, railway stations, hospitals and marketplaces, that largely served the working classes and office workers.

Caste practices that proscribed certain foods ensured that if Indians did eat out, it was only in establishments that catered to their particular caste-based preferences – the Udupi chains with their origins in Karnataka are...

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