Street Foods of Karnataka
Tue, Jan 19, 2010
Indian food is one of the world’s great cultural traditions. As with most national cuisines, what we eat today in restaurants reflects dishes developed in royal courts over the last 300 years. Indian street foods, however, offer access to some of India’s more ancient foodways.
500 years ago, as a commoner in agricultural Eurasia, India was perhaps the best place to eat. As with the rest of the Old World, everything was carb-centric, and tomatoes and chilies were yet to arrive. Yet even common Indian foods were frequently infused with coriander, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, and pepper. An average meal in the North might consist of chipati or puri bread dipped in a chutney for flavoring (like french fries and ketchup), or perhaps served with a simple curry of aubergines and onions, or a dhal, utilizing the spices above. In the South, large servings of rice were mixed with watery curries to add flavor.
Indian street foods maintain these traditions of starch and pulse-centricity, access for the common man, open-air trading of raw ingredients, and the simple-yet-bold spice combinations at the heart of South Asian cooking.
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Backyard pizza madman – a former subject of our Pizza-Oven Lifestyles series – Paul Gianonne (aka Paulie Gee) is opening his own joint in Green Point.
Great pictures Josh! I can practically taste the food just by looking at it.
Nice photos, but I’m not sure what you mean by “As with most national cuisines, what we eat today in restaurants reflects dishes developed in royal courts over the last 300 years.”
I can think of plenty of national cuisines that weren’t invented in courts in the last 300 years. The vast majority of national cuisines, I’d say.
Didyou mean something else here?