Rude Food: Who’s changing the way you eat?

People often ask me how much the eating out experience has changed in India’s metropolitan cities over the last five years or so. When I say that it has been transformed beyond recognition, they say things like “only at the five star hotels” or “perhaps this is because of the new malls” or “it is only true of the new fast food chains”.

And the answer to all of these questions is ‘yes’. But there is something much more significant happening than these glib responses would suggest. Of course, the launch of new hotels means that new restaurants will open; malls do offer quality real estate options to restaurateurs and the fast food chains are certainly altering the way Indians eat. However, this is not the full story.

Let’s take my own experience. I moved to Delhi’s Defence Colony in 1996. It was then a vast gastronomic wasteland. Over the years, things changed, but only slightly. There are now loads of restaurants in the colony but few that I would eat at with the exceptions of Swagath and Sagar. Nor was South Extension, which is next door, any better. If you drove from Def Col towards the centre of Delhi, the situation got no better till you reached the heart of Lutyens’ new city.

South Ex is still a disaster area for eating out. But somehow, it does not matter. So many excellent dining options have opened in the last five years, all within a 10 to 15 minute drive from my flat, that I am spoiled for choice.