It’s difficult to find authentic Chinese food in India

There are many international cuisines that are difficult to find in India.

You will not be surprised to learn that it’s hard to come across a good Spanish restaurant. Or to eat Ethiopian food.

 

But here’s one that may surprise you: it’s immensely difficult to find Chinese food in India.

 

   I see you staring at the preceding paragraph incredulously. Is this man mad, you mutter to yourself. Does he not know that Chinese is the single most popular foreign cuisine in India? That there is a Chinese restaurant at every corner in every Indian city? What is he talking about?

 

   Bear with me. Because the truth is that real Chinese food is almost impossible to find at India’s Chinese restaurants. Yes, they serve what they claim is Chinese food. But it is completely inauthentic. No Chinese person would recognise it as Chinese food. And many of the dishes are unknown in China. Those that sound Chinese are made very differently in India from the way they are made in China.

 

   The closest parallel I can think of is the food made at curry houses in the UK by Bangladeshis who would not dream of eating anything like it back home in Sylhet or Chittagong. Even the dishes that sound Indian — prawn patia, chicken vindaloo or Madras lamb curry— bear no resemblance to dishes with the same names in India. And some of the dishes were actually invented in the UK. Chicken Tikka Masala is to curry houses what Chicken Manchurian is to Indian Chinese restaurants. What’s worse is that because nobody would go to a curry house if it described itself as a Bangladeshi restaurant they all pretend to be Indian restaurants.

 

   It is almost exactly the same with Chinese restaurants in India and it has always been so. The first Chinese restaurants opened in Calcutta because there was an expatriate Chinese community there from the early years of the 20th Century. The local Chinese worked out quite quickly that they would get nowhere serving the food they actually made at home so they adapted the menus of American Chinese restaurants and added Indian touches.

 

   More Chicken Sweet Corn Soup has always been consumed in any medium sized Indian town than is eaten in the whole of China. And though Chilli Chicken has been a menu staple in India for sixty years, it is unknown in China because it was invented in Calcutta.

 

   Over the last 30 years or so, Chinese food has become so ubiquitous in India that the restaurateur Nelson Wang who probably invented Chicken Manchurian in Mumbai (“if Chairman Mao had seen what I was doing, he would have had me shot” Wang used to joke about his culinary assaults on the food of his distant ancestors) says that Indian-Chinese should be regarded as a completely distinct cuisine from anything invented in China.

 

   Which is fine. I loathe Sino Ludhianvi food with its Punjabi masalas and its thick red sauces. But people have a perfect right to enjoy it. Authenticity always comes second to flavour. And if millions of Indians think it is delicious then good for them.

 

   But it still leaves us with the irony we confronted in the paragraph that left so many of you so incredulous: despite the proliferation of so-called Chinese restaurants it’s really difficult to find a Chinese restaurant in India that serves the cuisine that is eaten in China.

 

   It’s not as though people have never tried to make the real thing. When the House of Ming opened in Delhi in 1978, the Taj group which had brought Sichuan food to India tried to be authentic but such was the pressure from its Punjabi clientele that compromises had to be made with authenticity. And within a few years House of Ming became House of Singh.

 

"The problem with all this is that while very good restaurants like Madam Chow can succeed they can only do it at the deluxe end of the market."

   I venture to suggest that all that may finally be changing. As more and more Indians travel abroad and discover that masala Hakka noodles are not integral to Chinese cuisine there is finally some demand for real Chinese food.

 

   The trendsetter was the Hyatt chain which opened two excellent restaurants in 2006: Delhi’s The China Kitchen and Mumbai’s The China House. Over the years the food at The China House has journeyed to Kathmandu and back but The China Kitchen remains an island of excellence serving world class Sichuan food. Other hotel chains have followed Hyatt’s lead. Even the House of Ming is back on form serving food that is much less Indianised: a London branch is packing them in.

 

   But the trendsetter has been the Oberoi group. When the Oberoi New Delhi reopened in 2018 after a complete make over, it boasted of Baoshuan, a modern Chinese restaurant mentored by Andrew Wong whose London restaurant is one of the few Chinese restaurants outside China to earn two Michelin stars. Despite a clamour for more familiar dishes the Oberois held firm and the restaurant is now a huge success.

 

   Last week the group opened Madam Chow at the Oberoi Gurgaon on its own without any consulting chefs. The menu takes in most of China’s regions, includes very good Dim Sum, authentic Peking Duck and many dishes that may not be familiar to Indian diners.

 

   It’s a risk to try and be authentic in Gurgaon which has always been a vast culinary wasteland without a single good Chinese restaurant but, to my surprise, the first reactions to Madam Chow have been almost ecstatic. It is widely talked about and has become a name to drop not just in Gurgaon but in neighbouring Delhi as well.

 

   Given that the menu makes no concessions to Punjabification and that the flavours are subtle and nuanced this is not just an achievement for the Oberois but a breakthrough for authenticity in a market usually regarded as unresponsive to quality.

 

   The problem with all this is that while very good restaurants like Madam Chow can succeed they can only do it at the deluxe end of the market. You can get authentic Chinese food at five star hotels —even in Ahmedabad where ITC’s Yi Jing is outstanding. But you won’t easily get it in the standalone sector. Those restaurants that have tried to serve the real thing have usually had to give up and cater to local tastes. Bangalore’s Cantan, for example, was very good when it first opened till the demands of the market intervened.

 

   So what do you do if you want an authentic Chinese meal and don’t want to pay hotel prices? My solution, when I am looking for something affordable, is to eat dim sum.

 

   For some reason dim sum seem to have journeyed to India without the obligatory halt in Ludhiana. The local dim sum places inspired by London restaurants-such as Yauatcha and the Royal Chinas- are usually reliable.

 

   But it may all just be a matter of time. Junk Chinese was invented in America and when the real thing did reach the US it was confined to expensive restaurants. But slowly and surely the cuisine trickled down to less expensive places. Now you can find good Chinese food all over America and all price points. Some of this has to do with demographics. A younger generation of diners became tired of eating chop suey and looked for the real thing. At the same time, younger generations of restaurateurs and chefs got fed up of cooking junk and looked to China to discover what the real cuisine was like.

 

   Or take the example of the British curry house where both diners and chefs wearied of eating bogus vindaloos. Younger Bangladeshis refused to work in family restaurants or began to learn what real Indian food was like. Now the number of curry houses is declining and more and more authentic Indian restaurants are opening.

 

   I imagine that something similar will happen with Chinese food in India. We just have to be patient.