A MANIFESTO FOR FOOD WRITING

I am neither a food influencer nor a food critic, though I am often asked if I am. I am not an influencer because all my evangelising won’t make or break any restaurant’s fortunes, I will not shape their success in any way, people won’t throng to taste the food I post on Instagram. Truth be told, someone who reviews consistently on Zomato probably impacts a restaurant’s bottom line far more than I ever will. I’m just a person who eats out obsessively and likes sharing details of the nicer meals I eat. 

‘But isn’t that what critics do?’ you may ask. It’s a fair question because every week I see articles by “food critics” that talk about the latest new restaurant, describing what they ate in the most basic manner (too spicy, too bland, too sweet, not warm and over salted being the five staple comments). The more pretentious ones have a wider arsenal of adjectives but it really feels like everyone who eats out a lot is a food critic today and I can see why. The word critic implies knowledge, expertise, intellect.. it implies respectability rather than the unabashed pursuit of free meals and gifts. 

Honestly I would love to be a food critic. To have a degree of expertise and knowledge about food that allows me to judge it on behalf of others as well as the ability to articulate my opinions not just coherently but incisively. There are food critics like Pete Wells at the New York Times or the late Jonathan Gold at the Los Angeles times whose columns I would read voraciously despite knowing that I would rarely (if ever) eat at the restaurants that were being reviewed. A great food writer or food critic doesn’t just sit and tell you what dishes to order in your local restaurants, they help you understand food contextually. Food as culture, food as memory, food as history, food as experience, food as politics, food as art and so much more. Like Norman Mailer writing about a boxing match in Kinshasa, a great food writer transports you to a zone where geography doesn’t matter, the specific topic doesn’t matter, because in reading a piece you emerge with a greater understanding of the world and yourself. A magical process where an article about the food habits of Andean villagers helps you understand better the food you grew up with in the North East, and where the fermented soya bean and pork you ate in Shillong helps you understand the perfection of a great dosa batter and from there to a crepe at Montmarte in Paris and so on and so forth.. our planet both immeasurably vast and diverse and yet connected and intimate in ways we can barely comprehend. 

So I am not a food critic and never will be one. However I do wish that almost every food writer in India also realised the same thing about themselves. There are less than ten people in India writing about food in a way that deserves to be read. Having 20000 people follow you on social media doesn’t make someone an expert on food. Neither does eating out every day. India’s food landscape has transformed over the last decade and I have no doubt that our chefs and restaurants have everything it takes to make a major impact on the global food scene. But in order to do so, the eco system needs to keep up, we need writers and critics with knowledge and understanding, insight and articulation, people who understand our food.. where it’s coming from, where it’s going and where it fits in the context of the global culture of food. People who can tell the Indian food story in all its inspiring beauty. 

So in some ways this is a call to arms to India’s current and aspiring food writers... a challenge to cut through the ocean of mediocrity that passes as food criticism in India today and help create a newer, more relevant discourse around Indian food, a discourse that goes beyond recipes and Instagram. Towards that end, here’s a manifesto for anyone who aspires to be a serious food writer writer someday... and if even one person follows this manifesto, I believe it will be an important step forward. 

• Eat a thousand meals and write 500 reviews but don’t publish a single piece. Write every day. About every meal. Ask questions. Ask about ingredients. Ask about technique. Ask about roots. Ask about family. Ask about produce. Ask about seasons. Ask about culture. Ask about grandmothers. Ask about partition. Ask about poverty. Ask about heritage. Ask about indulgence and opulence and things you can’t imagine asking about. And write about it all. Knowing that you know nothing. That you aren’t qualified to judge. Write to write. To understand. To get better. And when you feel you have written and written and written and you have something to say that others may not have figured on their own, that goes beyond what you ate and whether you liked it, then publish. 

• Pay for your meals. A great food writer doesn’t just love food but respects it. That means respecting the entire process that comes before that plate on your table. Respect the farmers and shepherds, respect the grocers and the butchers, the line cooks and the dishwashers, the servers and the valets, the chefs and the restauranters. Respect their effort, their time, their struggles, their sweat, their hope, their dreams, their courage in going off the beaten path, their fortitude in dealing with our Byzantine and corrupt system. Respect all of it and all of them and pay for it. If you expect free meals, then you don’t respect what goes into a meal, in which case I don’t see why anyone should respect your opinion about it. And no your social media following doesn’t compensate.. unless you’re writing for a really meaningful publication with real reach you don’t actually make a difference to the restaurants even if the PR hacks claim you do. Paying for you meals also means your pieces aren’t compromised, that you can write without conflicts of interest, that there are no obligations to be met and favours to be repaid. Yes there will be occasional places where over the years you will build a relationship and the chef may occasionally not let you pay, but that can only an occasional byproduct of your writing and its integrity, it cannot be the raison d’être of your writing. 

• Write what you know. If your exposure to Japanese food consists of two or three restaurants like Wasabi along with mall sushi on your travels then don’t bother trying to critique Japanese food. It’s perfectly okay to specialise in something like street food or regional food to start with. All great writing, whatever the genre, begins with truth and understanding. Don’t be pretentious and try and demonstrate expertise about food you don’t really know and don’t truly understand. Travel all you can and eat all you can and as you experience more and more you will find that your range will widen with exposure and knowledge. Pete Wells didn’t start out knowing what makes a good sheermal and he definitely didn’t become an expert by watching Chef’s Table or Masterchef in his living room. 

• Know what your story is. It’s not enough to say what you like without explaining why and creating a context for it, whether technical, factual, cultural or emotional. An opinion without any of these four perspectives will make you the Arnab Goswami of food writing. I’m sure it’s a worthy goal for some but I don’t think it works as an approach for someone who seeks respect and who truly wants to help take Indian food forward. While the greatest food writers will often be able to look at food from all four perspectives, there’s no rule that says that it’s a necessity. Different people connect with food in different ways. Think more deeply, question yourself more deeply, feel more deeply and understand why food resonates with you. That is the voice inside you that is true and that seeks expression. 

• Finally, seek to understand not just food itself but its place in the world. Our food habits are one of the things that differentiate us from every other species that has ever walked, swam or flown on this blue planet. There was a moment a long long time ago when an ancient ancestor of ours put a piece of meat to a flame, while another scattered some seeds on the ground. The food on your table is infused with the spirit of discovery and exploration that began at that moment and traversed across millennia through science and chemistry, through nomads and migrants, through trade and conflict, through immigration and exploration, from tribal societies to the great city states. It spans a gamut of myth and reality from the Promethean myth of fire as a divine gift to the chemistry of Heston Blumenthal, from the taste of your grandmother’s memory to the sustainability of our planet. 

Food isn’t just food. Food is the story of human evolution. Of human existence. What can you write about food if food is all you know? So seek to understand the world, and in the process you will see how food enables us to understand ourselves and each other just that little bit better. When you do that, then you’re ready to write about food.