Tasting the Trends

India’s food is one of her most remarkable features: its countless tastes and styles reflect the nation’s history, enduring traditions, and diversity of people and place—it is also rapidly changing. Eating the Past, Tasting the Future: exploring India through her changing food ventures ‘off the plate’, across the subcontinent and into the contemporary foodscape to discover the myriad forces – economic, technological, cultural, social and global — transforming what, how and where Indians are producing, trading and eating their food. At a time when food and our relationship to it are topics of increasing interest and debate, this is a timely, and important, work.

In Eating the Present author Charmaine O’Brien blends history, travelogue, memoir and conversations with leading chefs, restaurateurs, food writers, producers and retailers alongside domestic cooks and consumers to tell a unique story of India ‘now’ through her changing food.

While India’s culinary zeitgeist has many unique aspects, it is also being shaped by global factors as much as local considerations. In this talk Charmaine will share her own story of how she came to develop an ardent interest in India’s foodways; her observations on the impact of global food trends on transforming India’s food; and her predictions on how the burgeoning food trade between Australia (her home country) and India might influence future changes in food habits and preferences.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience.