If you have been following the furore over the price of tomatoes, you will note that reporters and political analysts often refer to tomatoes as a basic staple of Indian cooking and the food of the ...

A lot of nonsense is spoken about food in India. But in no area are the myths and misconceptions as prevalent as they are in the case of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food habits. People still like to ...

The first time I had an authentic Peking Duck in India was at the Great Wall restaurant at the Leela Palace in Mumbai twenty years ago. I was having lunch with Captain CP Krishnan Nair, the Leela ...

If I asked you to name the most famous north Indian restaurant in the world, my guess is that you would pick the obvious contender: Bukhara. And, by and large, most people would agree with you. It’s ...

A few weeks ago at HICSA, India’s most important hotel investment conference, Manav Thadani, who runs HVS, the organisation behind HICSA, presented Ajit Kerkar with a lifetime achievement award.

Do you think that the judiciary in India has become too politicised? That judges tailor their judgments, especially the remarks, to please politicians? That the hope of fair and free justice in our ...

It is a question that has often intrigued me. Each time there is a Kumbh Mela, tens of thousands of sadhus appear, seemingly out of nowhere. As the world media train their cameras, the sadhus march ...

Something strange and bewildering is happening to movies in India and nobody is sure where it will lead. Over the last two weeks, the big story in newspapers and on TV channels has been the campaign ...

I usually end each year or begin the following one by listing all the food trends I have observed over the last 12 months. This year, for reasons too tedious to recount, I neglected to do such a piece ...

Many people on Twitter marked an article from the Hindustan Times to me. The piece was a summary of a report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and had an irresistible headline: “Samosa ...

We were in a small village in a scenic – if touristy – part of Italy called Cinque Terre. There were no grand hotels but an enterprising inn-keeper had converted an old monastery into a ...

It’s not unusual for a restaurant to be successful for 25 years. Many of the restaurants in Delhi’s Connaught Place, Kolkata’s Park Street and Mumbai’s Churchgate Street have lasted for longer. Some ...