Over the course of 326 pages, food writer Chitrita Banerji sets out on an ambitious project, the objective being “to see how much authenticity in food and cookery could possibly survive in the changing, young-old, immigrant nation that is India.”

The author attempts to do so via a series of trips to destinations around India. Over the course of her travels, which took place between 2003 and 2006, she meets friends, food writers and chefs to discuss cuisine and, in doing so, inevitably tastes and writes about a variety of the regional specialities— savoury and sweet— that are set before her.

Banerji’s travel experiences and food-related observations are interspersed with memories from her childhood and youth. While giving the book a personal touch, and arguably providing an insight into the Bengali eating habits and food preparation of a generation or so ago, the memories sometimes seem a little self-indulgent. That’s not to say that Eating India lacks depth, as episodes from mythology, legend and history are also woven into the text.

Eating India gives the impression that it has been written primarily for non-Indian readers, to give an insight into the broad variety of regional cuisines served throughout the nation. Distances are given in miles. Place names are given in the old forms (Bombay, Calcutta, Madras). At one point Banerji asks a groom, “Did you always think you’d have an arranged marriage?” Banerji has spent approximately twenty years in the USA and, at times, she looks from outside at Indian culture.

Yet she also has the propensity to shift her identity, back to being a Bengali roving through her own country. The chapter ‘Bengal: Land of a Thousand Rivers’ is knowledgeably written, as might be expected from an author who has already published two books about food in that state.

In the chapters that follow, Banerji frequently compares the dishes and preparations of other regions to those she knows from Bengal. Ultimately, that can be distracting; an unnecessary filter that detracts from her observations about food in the destinations she visits.

In discussing the Chalukya text, and recipes for preparing fish in south India, she needlessly writes— “Tamarind, cardamom, black pepper may seem a wildly unorthodox combination to my fellow fish-lovers in Bengal…” When flying into Kerala she states, “[e]ven the Bengal coastline does not look as intensely green from above.” Surely readers want to understand Indian regional cuisines and the areas she visits, not how they compare to Bengali food and Bengal itself.

The sections on food history make for fascinating reading. The chapter ‘Banquets of the Imperial Palace— Muslim Style’ is highly readable spiced with interesting facts. Yet Banerji is also prone to the occasional slip. “With hindsight, the annexation of Avadh seems as significant an indicator of the colonisation of India as Hitler’s Anschluss was of Nazi domination,” she writes, pertaining to events in 1856.

One would expect more from an experienced author; someone who should know better than to make a historical and potentially dangerous comparison. Such comments inevitably make one question the author’s perception of historical contexts.

Also, Banerji is inexplicably guilty of double standards when it comes to naming the people she meets on her travels. Usually first name terms are used (Kushwant, Rahul, Radha) but Banerji uses the surnames of the chefs Hemant Oberoi and Nabhojit Ghosh.

Eating India is not without flaws but it does make a valiant attempt— to fulfil what was always going to be a difficult objective— and to contextualise Indian regional cuisine.