“Authentic” Indian

I recently ate at a really great restaurant called the Clay Oven. The food was delicious from start to finish, the service pleasant and the end result rather disconcerting. We started with soft warm naan filled with paneer and spinach followed by vegetable samosas made out of potatoes and peas. For the main course I split an order of chicken with a creamy saffron sauce over a bed of basmati rice. Yet even as my tongue was delighting in the powerful flavors, easily recognizable to the Western palate as those of an Indian restaurant, my mind was wandering to the article on Indian national cuisine by Arjun Appadurai. Could what I was enjoying really be considered authentic Indian food? Or was the curry on my neighbors plate really Mughlai cuisine in disguise?

I have more or less come to terms with the fact that the foods outsiders use to define a region aren’t likely to be eaten every day. But the idea that we might be so mistaken as to define a region by foods that they don’t even recognize as their own is a little disconcerting. I remember hearing someone say how disappointed they were when they realized that American cuisine is defined by McDonalds. For me this is insulting especially since I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been to McDonalds in my life. I tend to define the cuisine of my country by what I and those around me eat, in my America the golden arches might as well not exist. To me American cuisine is fresh veggies picked from the garden and trout caught upstream from camp. It is the first strawberry of July and the last blackberry of September. It is fresh and abundant and wonderful but not necessarily the way all Americans eat.

Chances are it is the same around the globe. Although there are many different ways people might define their country’s cuisine in the end only a few will prevail. Some regions are bound to garner more attention than others whether through economic superiority or regional history their popularity will overshadow the inputs of others. Whether by design or by chance the few dishes picked up by the rest of the world have the impossible task of representing a complicated and diverse society in a few mouthfuls.

Can anything then be considered authentic outside of its surroundings? Or in them for that matter for in these days of cross-cultural sampling is the idea of having a food solely from your region even plausible? The saffron that Spain holds dear came from the Orient and the tomatoes that create such tasty sauces in Italy hail from Peru. Even when a country agrees on a dish it is more than likely that its neighbors will claim that their version came first, tastes better and is more authentic overall. And although I was able to finish my meal with gusto and savor every bite I am unable to claim that I had anything more than really good food. Not good Indian food, or good Pakistani cuisine, for who am I to judge what defines a region? In the end maybe it is enough that I had good food, but while the stomach is satiated the mind hungers on.