the GoodEater Collaborative

Author: Joshua Levin (33 Articles)

Joshua Levin is a consultant to non-profits and their corporate partners in sustainable agriculture business development and sustainable food markets. Joshua holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business, where he was a Catherine B. Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship, and a BA from Harvard University. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, NY.

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.