I often scroll through peevish threads on social media about bastardizing food and (dis)honoring authenticity, often in semantics. A food blogger sighs over gratuitous descriptors like ‘Greek yogurt and Persian cucumber for a Raita Sauce’. While I am not going to brood over localizing recipes to convey essence of a foreign cuisine, I can’t deny the twitchy indignation in my gut when I see the ‘lentil stew, seasoned with turmeric and spices finished with a tempering of whole spices flash fried in oil’ byline for a Dal at an Indian restaurant, celebrating Indian cuisine, in an Indian city. Contrast this with the sweeping assumptions that American fast food chains make about their prosaic Hamburgers and frothy Lattes. I confess to sheepishly spending a minute or two skimming images and pronunciations, before placing my order at fine dine Italian restaurants. Something seems amiss to me, if Indian restaurants and hotels are spending so much letter & ink highlighting t...
The Pursuit of Yummyness