Customer Reviews

Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices

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Title: Eating India
Author: Chitrita Banerji
ISBN: 978-1-59691-018-8
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Review By: Diana Rohini LaVigne, Indian Life & Style Magazine

From local eating myths to well-known facts about how food migrates with its people, Eating India rips into the history of food in India leaving no stone unturned. Wonderfully written in travel journal-style, Eating India takes readers from the pepper capital of Kerala to the imperial styled northern cuisines of Muslims to the eating habits of the fast-paced city by the sea, Bombay. Chitrita Bangerji challenges her own childhood memories of various cuisines and asks locals about emerging trends in food'. She strives to find the `real' story from `real' people and delivers a knock-out book in the end.

The details of her findings are laced with interesting tidbits about the geographic region, the nature of the people in the area and a vivid description of the sights and sounds so that a reader can place themselves exactly in that area without difficulty.

This is an important book in order to preserve some of the finer details about the exquisite cuisine in India. Without this book, the world might loose some of that history. Eating India is fun to read, delivers an incredible amount of information and an important part of keeping the history of India's cuisines alive.

You think you know India, but after reading Eating India, you realize how wonderfully rich, tasty, and complex is the "Khichdi" called India. The real melting pot through millenia that has absorbed the waves of Aryans, Huns, Mongols, Greeks, Mughals, Europeans, and many others into its ever changing but unique identity is explored here in this book through the medium of food. The book is more than just a food book. It offers a prismatic look at the people, history, geography, and culture of the various regions of India. I grew up in Gujarat, but after reading the book, my salivary glands are working overtime, and I cannot wait to visit Ahmedabad and check out Agashiye restaurant. For the gastronomically adventurous traveller, especially if she has the digestive immune system that can handle a few choice microbes, the pleasures of eating at a roadside "dhaba" is not to be missed.
A wonderful book for anyone who loves food, travel, and history. Desis and non-desis alike will find it stimulating and appetizing.

this book is in a class of its own--part travel, part food and part culture spiced throughout with love --
Chitrita spoils us again with her excellent writing, fantastic eye for detail and ability to bring together and share with us the foods and customs and locales that make India so wild, exotic and special; she shares it all from her authentic perspective. This is unlike any other book on India; we have waited too long for this integrated point of view. hope she has another book in the works. Mary K. Eliot

I've rarely picked up a food book and not found something interesting or insightful to extract from it. That said, I did find the book enjoyable but the bias was very mind-bendingly annoying. Someone should let the author know that there are a few other states (I don't know...say 28?) with cuisines and culture that are distinct and valued as Bengal's is. From Punjabi truck drivers to ocean dwelling fish, nobody is safe from her scorn.

The title of this book should really have been "Eating India: Proof that Bengali cuisine is superior". Knowing the author is from Kolkata, I expected more coverage of Bengali cuisine. But I certainly didn't expect a blatant bias when covering other regional cuisines. The author constantly harks back to the food she knows best and asserts how her native cuisine requires a more delicate balance of spices and herbs without making much of an effort in knowing if other cuisines require a similar balance. Simple Bengali dishes are glorified while dishes of similar or even higher complexity from other regions are given just a passing mention. I made a bad decision in buying this book outright. So I couldn't justify quitting after the first couple of chapters. I could however, resort to speed reading and turn the pages as quickly as possible. :-)

i agree with reviewer Ashwin Needamangala. the author's bias towards all things bengali is incredibly blatant. and moreover she repeatedly drives the point home that many ingredients such as onions and garlic are considered "impure" and "unclean" in the hindu diet because they are traditionally used to cook meat in muslim cuisine. considering hinduism predates islam in india i wonder how accurate this interpretation truly is and how much of it has to do with what seems to be a chip on the author's shoulder against muslim cooking and perhaps islam in general. and even as she claims to not prescribe to hinduism she repeatedly drives the significance of the caste-system home without much of a sense of criticism on the matter.

nevertheless the book does present quite a bit of useful historical information about various regional cuisine in india. i particularly liked her explanations of the colonial legacy on certain types of eating habbits and now popular fusion type dishes dishes. and the books work well as a sort of travelogue.

I would highly recommend this literary work to anyone that is interested not only in the cuisines of the different regions of India, but who is also interested in the history of India.