Chennai in the 1980s might have seemed an unlikely place to sample kvass and kimchi. Yet for one evening every year the Russian drink brewed from bread and the spicy fermented Korean cabbage was available to anyone willing to buy them for the benefit of charity.
August 22 marks Madras Day, when the city was founded in 1639. It has grown from a one-day event to a full month celebrating the city’s often overlooked past. This includes a surprisingly diverse dining history. Outsiders may assume Chennai’s cuisine consists of idli-dosa and biryani made with short-grain rice, but the city’s cultural scene combined with its location facing South- East Asia has always meant a large expatriate community, which brought their cuisine with them.
The International Evening organised by the Guild of Service brought expats from consulates and companies together to offer this food for charity. It was a big event, attended by the Governor, but also open to anyone, and people really came. The homemade Russian kvass was the most popular — it was so weakly alcoholic it could hardly be noticed, but even that was enough to cause big queues in a city with strictly controlled liquor sales.
The Germans were also popular thanks to potato salad and large amounts of imported sausages. The Japanese provided perfectly fried tempura and the Koreans sold barbecued skewers and pungent kimchi, which was a real revelation. In retrospect, these paved the way for the popularity of the Japanese and Korean restaurants that would open in the ’90s when big companies from these countries started building their factories in Chennai. The event ended around then too, and might seem irrelevant in the city’s more cosmopolitan dining scene today. But it was an example of how food offers a beguiling way to build a country’s reputation.
Embassies have always practised dining diplomacy, but it’s usually been limited to political elites. But in recent years, several countries have started investing directly in promoting their food as soft power.
Thailand offers training and even readymade restaurant formats for Thai restaurants abroad. Japan successfully lobbied UNESCO to include washoku, traditional Japanese cuisine, in its Intangible Heritage of Humanity list. Peru smartly rode on Japanese cuisine by promoting its Nikkei cuisine, created by Japanese immigrants.
Issues of authenticity often stymie national cuisines abroad, but South Korea took the opposite tactic, promoting fusion cuisines like Korean-Mexican and helping adapt Korean food to halal norms to sell in Muslim countries.
Indian food is already known abroad, even if not in its full diversity. And that encapsulates the problem with any really focussed national effort: How could one fairly decide which type of Indian food to promote? Any choice would guarantee a furore over federal favouritism.
But this also suggests a solution — this kind of food promotion could be delegated to states. Whatever their local differences, nearly all regional politicians might agree on the value of promoting their cuisines both in other parts of India and abroad.
A few problems might ensue like Bengal and Odisha’s spat over rossogullas, but regional Indian foods are vast enough to offer lots of opportunity. The canteens in Delhi’s state bhavans already offer a model for this, though their varying fortunes, depending on the quality of the caterers hired, show how bureaucracy can bungle things. A more flexible format would work better, and those old International Evenings might offer a model.
Instead of permanent restaurants — best left to private parties — state governments could support local caterers in taking their food to other states, and even abroad, on occasions like Republic Day. States could offer a common venue to other states on that day, knowing that they would get reciprocal benefits.
Indian diplomats could help with coordination abroad. This might all seem unrealistic, but my memory of those International Evenings, with everyone enjoying diverse food and drink for one night, is strong enough for me to hope it might happen!
By Vikram Doctor
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/kimchi-sausage-tempura-how-1980s-chennai-became-a-hub-of-culinary-cultural-diversity/articleshow/103098611.cms
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