US columnist apologises for saying ‘Indian cuisine based on one spice’
An opinion piece published by The Washington Post on Indian food, which was supposed to be humorous, has enraged Indians who trolled the writer, Gene Weingarten, for his ignorance and lack of research about India’s diverse cuisines.
The article, titled “You can’t make me eat these foods,” which has since been modified, talks about foods that Weingarten doesn’t like to eat, like hazelnuts and anchovies. But Weingarten’s view about Indian food that it is “the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice”, sparked a debate that refuses to die, despite an apology from the writer himself.
Weingarten wrote in the opinion piece: “The Indian subcontinent has vastly enriched the world, giving us chess, buttons, the mathematical concept of zero, shampoo, modern-day nonviolent political resistance, Chutes and Ladders, the Fibonacci sequence, rock candy, cataract surgery, cashmere, USB ports … and the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice.”
What in the white nonsense™️ is this? pic.twitter.com/ciPed2v5EK
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) August 23, 2021
The American writer further wrote: “If you like Indian curries, yay, you like Indian food! If you think Indian curries taste like something that could knock a vulture off a meat wagon, you do not like Indian food. I don’t get it, as a culinary principle,” he said, adding, “It is as though the French passed a law requiring every dish to be slathered in smashed, pureed snails. (I’d personally have no problem with that, but you might, and I would sympathize.)”
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Internationally acclaimed chef and TV host Padma Lakshmi reacted on Instagram by calling the piece “lazy and racist.” Lakshmi said she does not have a problem with Gene Weingarten not liking Indian food, but regretted “old colonizer tropes, gleefully reducing the culture and country of 1.3 billion people to a (frankly) weak punchline.”
The celebrity cook also pulled up The Washington Post for publishing such an ill-researched article. Lakshmi wrote: “Is this really the type of colonizer ‘hot take’ the @washingtonpost wants to publish in 2021- sardonically characterizing curry as “one spice” and that all of India’s cuisine is based on it?
https://twitter.com/veronikabond/status/1429857963162939392
Anand Giridharadas, publisher of The Ink, tweeted: “’Curry’ is not one spice. I don’t even know how these people do their research.”
The Washington Post has since modified Weingarten’s piece. “A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Indian cuisine is based on one spice, curry, and that Indian food is made up only of curries, types of stew. In fact, India’s vastly diverse cuisines use many spice blends and include many other types of dishes. The article has been corrected,” a disclaimer on the page reads.
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Weingarten too apologised after being badly trolled. He said he came off sounding like a “whining infantile ignorant d—head” and said that he should have named a single dish he disliked, rather than painting a whole cuisine with the same brush.
I pride myself on my Pakistani cooking. I also love South Indian, and fusion dishes. That you got paid to write this tripe, and boldly spew your racism is deplorable.
May your rice be clumpy, roti dry, your chilies unforgivable, your chai cold, and your papadams soft.— Shireen Ahmed (@_shireenahmed_) August 23, 2021
The American writer also clarified on the comment that invited the maximum wrath. “Also, yes, curries are spice blends, not spices,” he tweeted.
