WaPo Columnist Draws Fury for Op-Ed Belittling Indian Cuisine

Nurtured in different kinds of soil and climate by people of different cultures and religions – the taste of Indian cuisine is infused with various spices, herbs, vegetables, meat, and fruits and poetically changes from one region to another.

Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post columnist has found himself in hot water after putting “Indian food” – generalising all of it as “curry” – on the list of dishes he despises. 

In his article titled “You Can’t Make Me Eat These Foods”, the 69-year-old writer claims that his “sophisticated” taste palette likes food items that lack the “eww factor” – unlike hazelnuts, Balsamic vinegar, and Indian food.

The expression of the writer’s repulsion for Indian food, however, did not end there. Sharing a link to the story on Twitter, Weingarten further wrote that he recently visited “Rasika”, a popular Indian restaurant in Washington, DC, where the dishes were “swimming in the herbs and spices” he most “despises”. 

The opinion piece has since stirred an uproar among Indians following The Washington Post columnist, who grabbed the opportunity to school him with befitting replies.

Among several Indians and Indo-Americans who responded to the article, famous author Padma Lakshmi asked Weingarten to “fu*k off” on behalf of 1.37 billion Indians. 

​Readers also targeted Weingarten for his “factually incorrect lazy writing” because in a now deleted line in his article he mentioned that Indian food is the “only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice”. 

Sharing screenshots of the now deleted line in the story, Indians have been educating the columnist on the different kinds of “masalas” used in everyday Indian food. 

​This incident comes at a time when Indian food bloggers living abroad are trying to dissociate the colonial term “curry” from categorising all kinds of Indian food.

According to Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, an associate religious studies professor at the University of Vermont, when British officials reached the southern Indian states in the 1850s, they repeatedly heard the Tamil word “kari”, which translates to “blackened” or “side dish”, depending on the context and varied regional languages of southern India. 

That’s where the trend of categorising all Indian food as “curry” emerged from. 

Indian food bloggers called this “British-era” term “racist” earlier this month. 

Sourse: sputniknews.com