Imagine you travel 3096 miles from Russia to India. You are here for only 30 hours. But there’s a lot to look forward to beyond just trade deals and political talk. After all, India is the land of multiple heritage cuisines, known for its hospitality and its varied culinary traditions. 

Atithi Devo Bhava and all that. 

You’re looking forward to the one sit-down dinner in one of the most stunning buildings of India – the Raj Bhavan – with food served on fine bone china and by liveried waiters. This is soft diplomacy at its best. It’s also a great way to learn about a country or a people – through what they eat.

It’s also the reason why we use the term “breaking bread”.  In the Bible, bread and its “breaking” naturally signified hospitality, fellowship and communal life. In fact, one of the greatest signs of hospitality is to invite someone into your home and feed them – not with what food you enjoy but with the food your guest will enjoy. This is a concept that predates scripture. The ancient Greeks had xenia – the sacred duty of guest-friendship – which obligated a host not merely to offer food but to offer food the guest could actually eat. 

But as Russian President Vladimir Putin, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and now Seychelles President Patrick Herminie have all discovered, we believe in a slightly different brand of diplomacy in India when it comes to state guests. Over here, you eat what we eat. Lactose intolerant? Gluten averse? Devoted carnivore who has just survived a Moscow winter on borscht and blini? None of that matters at our table.

So instead of gostaba or prawn balchao or even alu posto (most countries and even students at Culinary Institute of America where I’m a local India expert do not cook with poppyseed), you are served what can only be called diet food: a strange salad of mung beans and cucumber with a tadka of rai, followed by “mini” dhokla and jakhiya aloo and green tomato chutney. In fact there’s so much potato, you can say goodbye to all the purported benefits of this pure vegetarian diet which you had no choice but to eat. 

Now don’t get me wrong. I am a great believer in the fact that India houses some of the finest and most varied vegetarian and vegan cuisine, especially if you travel east. The gamut of vegetables, the absence of dairy, and the use of minimal spicing – this country is a vegan’s delight. 

So if we can use the occasion of a state dinner to illuminate that – to show the world there is so much beyond dal makhni and dosa and balti chicken and mutton vindaloo – then yes, absolutely, let us celebrate it.

But our state dinners have become a comedy of the absurd. This is like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party without the whimsy or the finger sandwiches. The menu descriptions read as if written by someone intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity, dressed in Salvador Dali-esque surrealism. 

Let me present to you the description of the menu for the Seychelles President. “We honour the centuries old ties between India and Seychelles, bound by the waters of the Indian Ocean. Each course showcases elements of the cuisines of India’s coastal regions such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu [Goa and Bengal be damned] – where spices, coconut, kokum, bananas, jackfruit, lentils and rice are part of the rhythms of life. These shared ingredients and flavours echo the lived traditions of coastal communities across the Indian Ocean world.” 

This was followed by the menu:

White pumpkin & coconut soup
(with mini Idiyappam & curry leaf oil from Malabar region)

Salad & appetisers

Koshambari with charred pineapple, yogurt foam
(our take on the South Indian salad of split mung beans and cucumber, tempered with mustard seeds)

Jackfruit & banana blossom skewers
(with edible sugarcane skewers and Kokum essence – Kerala)

Mini dhokla with mustard topping
(steamed chickpea flour cake from Gujarat)

Pre-mains

Sorekai, majjige huli, yam and raw banana thoran, greens
(stuffed bottle gourd, spiced yam and raw banana in a delicate Kannada-style yoghurt sauce)

Served with Malabari parotta & jolad (white millet) bhakri

Not that the state banquet for Russian President Vladimir Putin in December 2025 had a better spread. Here’s the reported menu from the official banquet hosted at Rashtrapati Bhavan:

Soup & starters

Murungelai chaaru (moringa & moong bean broth) 

Gucchi doon chetin (stuffed morels with Kashmiri walnut chutney) 

Kaale chane ke shikampuri (black gram kebabs) 

Vegetable jhol momo with chutney (steamed dumplings) 

Main Course

Zafrani paneer roll (saffron cottage cheese roulade) 

Palak methi mattar ka saag (spinach & fenugreek peas) 

Tandoori bharwan aloo (stuffed grilled potatoes) 

Achaari baingaan (spiced baby eggplant) 

Yellow dal tadka (lentils) 

Dry fruit & saffron pulao 

Breads

Lachha paratha, magaz naan, satanaj roti, missi roti, biscuity roti 

Desserts & accompaniments

Badam ka halwa 

Kesar-pista kulfi 

Fresh fruits, gur sandesh, murukku 

Salads & snack sides (beetroot, khaman kakdi, boondi raita, papdi chaat, pickles) 

Fresh juices (pomegranate, orange, carrot-ginger) 

While I understand that because our leaders are vegetarian, they may prefer to serve vegetarian food to their guests – and one can only imagine the horror if, reciprocally, only meat or seafood were served on a visit to Moscow or Lisbon – my other bone of contention (yes, yes, sacrilege to speak of bones) is this: if you must focus on coastal cuisines, why have Orissa and Bengal been so comprehensively ignored? What sin has my state and my neighbouring state committed? The shores of the Bay of Bengal have fed poets and philosophers for millennia. Where is all of this in the grand coastal narrative?

Even keeping religious sensibilities firmly in mind and setting aside pork and beef entirely, the nuanced non-vegetarian cuisine of this country is extraordinary and the techniques in which we cook these - we steam, poach, roast, wrap and cook in banana leaves. To serve not a single fish, not a prawn, not a piece of chicken to a visiting dignitary is to perform a kind of wilful culinary banishment. And if this is because our diplomacy disapproves of cruelty to animals, then should we – and I ask this with all due respect to the yoghurt foam – really be serving dairy?

In the land of nihari, haleem, doi maach, kebabs, tandoori tikkas, patrani macchi and biryanis and pulao, is this really the most representative menu we could come up with?

I grew up in a home with considerably fewer cooks and a dramatically smaller kitchen than Raj Bhavan, but if a shuddh shakahari guest from foreign shores came to call, we ensured that a multi-course vegetarian menu featuring the very best of Bengali cooking was laid before them. And if someone preferred chicken to fish, that is what appeared, alongside a generous spread of vegetables. But what do us commoners know of hospitality?

In the world of state dinners, guests are supposed to check their dietary preferences at the portico, and sit down to a shuddh shakahari world where they are served nettles and dhokla and yoghurt foam (yes, this yoghurt foam even if created by the very famous Naar, has really got my goat). Maybe this is a way of ensuring that our diplomatic ties are quickly firmed up, and our state guests don’t overstay their welcome. Or is this a subtle move to promote the in-room dining services of our hotels, because I imagine many diplomatic visitors return to their five-star hotels and dial the kitchen to ask for a simple Lucknowi biryani or a prawn malai curry or some kebabs or a rogan josh, for a slightly wider taste of India. 

And if we simply must keep things polite and avoid the wrath of over-zealous government supporters, we could always serve chicken – the paneer of the non-vegetarian world – and fish, also known as jaltaru or the vegetable of the sea, and sidestep the critics entirely. Even the vegetarians should rise up in arms over the strange and inedible feasts being served up in the name of a pure vegetarian nation.

Excuse me while I step away to stir up some yoghurt foam and drape it over my nettle pakoras.   

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