The first time I went to Lucknow, in 2013, I followed the usual script handed out by friends, family, and the internet. I sampled the famous galawat ke kebab at Tunday Kababi, biryani from Idrees, kachoris from Durga Khasta Corner, chaat from Royal Café, and, of course, a steaming kulhad of chai from Sharma Ji ki Chai. Lucknow’s food felt like a neatly curated checklist; one dish, one shop, one picture for each craving.
But moving and living in Lucknow has changed how I taste the city. Kebabs, chai, kachori, or even chutney — there are dozens of variations, each with its own loyal following and story. Chowk’s tangy khasta is nothing like Hazratganj’s buttery one, and the tea that fuels conversations in Aminabad tastes and feels different from the chai in Gomti Nagar. When people ask me for food recommendations today, my goal is simple: To make them see Lucknow beyond galawati kebabs and Instagram-famous shops.
That’s why the Uttar Pradesh government’s proposed “One District, One Cuisine” initiative, which got a boost after Lucknow’s nomination for “UNESCO’s Creative City of Gastronomy” got accepted, and through which the government intends to popularise one cuisine from each district, worries me. It sounds neat on paper — who wouldn’t want to link every district to a proud local delicacy? But food doesn’t work like that. A city’s culinary identity is not a single dish on a pedestal. It’s a messy, fragrant, indefinable table where stories, communities, and forgotten recipes coexist.
How do you pick one dish to represent Lucknow when its foodscape includes street-side kachoris, temple prasads, majlis tabarruk, and home-cooked aloo gosht with a side of faith, migration, caste, and family history?
Food is part of our intangible cultural heritage, a way of life passed down through generations. Recipes, cooking techniques, and even the etiquette of dining are reflections of values, belief systems, and social identities. As Harvard anthropologist Theodore Bestor said, “the culinary imagination is the way a culture conceptualises and imagines food”. Reducing an entire district to one state-approved “representative” dish risks flattening that imagination, turning living traditions into branded commodities.
Just as there is no one “Indian” language, there is no one “Indian” food. India’s culinary heritage is enormous, shaped by local ingredients, caste-based cooking methods, and regional beliefs. For the longest time, the West thought Indian food meant butter chicken. Now, chefs like Vijay Kumar are changing that narrative; Semma, which serves South Indian food, has won Michelin stars three years in a row in New York. That’s what happens when you let food speak for itself instead of forcing it into a simplified box.
India’s diversity cannot be captured in a single dish. What we eat, how we eat and why we eat what we do are key to understanding India’s social landscape. It is a work of caste, class, religion, region and kinship. Consider Lucknow again. During Muharram, some distribute roti, others sharbat or khichda; during Shravan, some cook sabudana khichdi, others make makhana kheer or khamang kakdi. These are not just recipes but expressions of belief and community, woven into social interactions and rituals. Which one of these would you choose to represent “Lucknow’s cuisine”? And more importantly, who gets to decide?
Colleen Taylor Sen, in Feasts and Fasts (2014), describes Indian cuisine as “an active, ever-changing product of 5,000 years of political upheavals, migrations and conquests, revelries and lamentation”. How then can a policy like “One District, One Cuisine” hope to do justice to this dynamism? Social media already promotes homogeneity by amplifying the most photogenic or viral dishes. The algorithm favours popularity, not cultural nuance. When state policy mirrors that behaviour, we risk celebrating virality instead of vitality.
Food scholar Lucy M Long defines culinary tourism as “the intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of another — participation including the consumption, preparation, and presentation of a food item, cuisine, meal system, or eating style considered to belong to a culinary system not one’s own.” Culinary adventuring, whether through street food in a far-off country or at an immigrant-run eatery in your own city, promotes diversity and understanding. A plate of kebabs in a Hazratganj restaurant might tell a story of aristocratic Awadhi refinement, while the same kebab in a Chowk stall speaks of street-side hustle and working-class ingenuity. A one-cuisine policy stands to kill curiosity by presenting a single, state-sanctioned narrative of what a place “tastes like”. Which story would “One District, One Cuisine” choose to erase?
Food is not just about consumption; it is about belonging. A humble plate of food can be a profound communicator of identity: both a representation offered by those who cook it and an experience for those who taste it. In multicultural societies, culture is constantly recreated and reconstructed through interactions, and food often crosses ethnic and religious boundaries. Khamiri rotis, for example, are shared between Hindus and Muslims in Old Delhi; sharbat is as much a community beverage in Muharram as it is during a langar or bhandara during festivals.
When policies are imposed from the top down, they risk silencing these organic cultural exchanges. Promoting food democratically, from the bottom up by listening to the people who cook, sell, and eat these dishes every day would be a different matter altogether. But if it comes through government committees and hashtags, it feels less like a celebration and more like appropriation.
To truly celebrate Uttar Pradesh’s food, we need to listen to its kitchens, not its hashtags.
The writer is a chef and author
To truly celebrate Uttar Pradesh’s food, we need to listen to its kitchens, not its hashtags (Representative/ Photo: Unsplash) 
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