Late diplomat Satinder Lamba loved telling a story from the early 1990s, when newly independent Central Asian republics were still finding their diplomatic footing. Sent by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao as India’s envoy, Lamba attended a state dinner in Kyrgyzstan hosted by President Askar Akayev.
Mid-conversation, a delicacy was placed before him. A sheep’s eye. The president dropped one onto Lamba’s plate and explained that it must be swallowed whole, allowed to melt gently in the stomach. With the composure of a seasoned envoy, Lamba gulped the eyeball down his throat, although with great difficulty.
Still wide-eyed and recuperating, the president asked him how it tasted. Diplomatically, Lamba could not say it was bad. He praised the dish. The president, pleased, dropped another eye into his plate. The whole delegation watched poor Lamba’s tribulation as he tried to swallow a second eyeball.
That is what the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government looks like doing with visiting foreign dignitaries these days, who are offered fanciful, but sparse, vegetarian fare only.
The grapevine claims that when Seychelles President Patrick Herminie attended a banquet at Rashtrapati Bhavan, he later returned to his hotel and ordered dinner from room service.
At the banquet, the menu read like poetry. WHITE PUMPKIN and COCONUT SOUP with mini idiyappam and curry leaf oil. Koshambari with charred pineapple and yogurt foam, billed as “our take” on a South Indian salad. Jackfruit and banana blossom skewers threaded on edible sugarcane sticks with kokum essence from Kerala. Mini dhokla with mustard topping. Stuffed bottle gourd. Spiced yam. Raw banana in delicate Kannada-style yogurt sauce.
The main course, by some accounts, was essentially potatoes cooked Gujarati style, roasted brinjals, paneer, and mushrooms. Carefully plated. Sparingly portioned. Admirably virtuous.
It is said this is not an isolated episode. Other visiting dignitaries, according to diplomatic chatter, have been spotted returning from banquets at Rashtrapati Bhavan and Hyderabad House and quietly ordering food at their hotels. The official dinner is consumed with diplomatic smiles. The real dinner, apparently, arrives under a silver cloche at midnight.
Earlier, Member of Parliament Mohua Moitra claimed that French President Emmanuel Macron requested bread, cheese, and cold cuts in his room after the G20 summit banquet, where millets, or bajra, dominated the spread. One imagines a global leader, post-summit glow intact, studying the in-room dining menu with quiet determination and circling “cheese platter” with relief.
Rajma Chawal at AI Summit
At the recent AI Summit in Delhi, the menu once again elevated strict vegetarian simplicity.
The starter, Varnila, described as “Colourful and Vivid,” featured baby spinach crisp, yogurt sphere, tamarind date chutney, cilantro relish with Old Delhi masala, and multigrain jowar crisp. The main course, Sasya, “Harvest – Produce of the Field,” included GI-tagged Munsyari rajma gahat, Pahadi rice, and jhangora pulao, Kumaoni aloo aur sabz ke gutke, silky tomato anari. It contained milk and nuts.
The dignitaries were, in essence, served rajma chawal, albeit narrated in elevated prose.
Kashmiri girda bread was placed on the table, though in the Valley it is traditionally paired with tea, not with dinner. Dessert arrived as a moist chena cake sponge soaked in sweetened milk, accompanied by winter berry compote and pearl millet streusel. It was delicate. It was inventive. It was also, for some, insufficient.
The question now circulating in Delhi’s political corridors is disarmingly simple. Should a host impose dietary preferences on guests? And is it wise diplomacy to send dignitaries home peckish?
Those accustomed to roasts, steaks, pies, grilled fish, and a procession of hearty courses often find the recent airy vegetarian presentations hard to decode. Even lifelong vegetarians confess that some of these dishes feel more like edible essays than dinner.
Food has always been political theatre.
Indian Express columnist Coomy Kapoor quoted noted journalist M.V. Kamath, recalling Richard Nixon’s visit to India. Morarji Desai, then the finance minister, hosted him to a vegetarian dinner. Nixon, not in power at the time, was not happy with the modest Indian meal and compared it with the lavish spreads he had enjoyed in Pakistan. The comparison may have been unfair, but in diplomacy, perception travels faster than truth. Did this also play with his revulsion towards India?
Traditionally, foreign hosts provide vegetarian options for Indian guests while also accommodating the broader table. At Rashtrapati Bhavan and Hyderabad House, it was long customary to include one or two dishes inspired by the visiting country. A nod to familiarity.
In a 2011 article in the Taiwanese journal Issues and Studies, public diplomacy expert Paul Rockower wrote that winning hearts and minds often begins with the stomach. He did not mention that indigestion, too, can find its way into cables and communiqués.
Culinary diplomacy aims to polish a nation’s brand. It shifts the conversation from geopolitics to culture. Food is universal. It disarms. It delights. It distracts from hard edges.
Global Gastro-diplomacy
A preliminary empirical study of gastrodiplomacy programs in several countries found measurable improvements in national branding. The modern practice emerged in nineteenth century Europe, when French cuisine became the lingua franca of diplomacy. Elaborate multi-course banquets perfected by chefs like Auguste Escoffier were not merely meals. They were performances of power.
Fourteenth century traveler Ibn Battuta described rulers by the food they served him. His accounts of abundance and generosity shaped his portrayal of kingdoms. The 1972 banquets at the Great Hall of the People during Richard Nixon’s visit to China were hailed as milestones in culinary statecraft. Food historian Michelle T. King has written about these orchestrated performances, and The New York Times even published recipes so readers could recreate détente at home.
In 2005, Japan established the Japan Brand Working Group to advance its culinary diplomacy. In 2009, South Korea invested $77 million in “Korean Cuisine to the World,” also known as Global Hansik. Nicknamed Kimchi Diplomacy, it aimed to make Korean food one of the world’s top five cuisines and expand the global footprint of Korean restaurants.
In September 2012, the United States launched its Culinary Diplomacy Partnership Initiative. More than 80 chefs joined the American Chef Corps, organized by the State Department’s Office of Protocol. They were dispatched to embassies to demonstrate American cuisine as a reflection of diversity and openness.
Closer home, the multicourse wazwan of the Kashmir Valley has soothed tempers and, some insist, nudged politics. In December 1955, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru ensured that he visited Srinagar in winter. A famous photograph shows then Kashmir Prime Minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad offering goshtaba, a spiced meatball in yogurt gravy, directly to Khrushchev.
Upon his return, the Soviet Union began vetoing resolutions related to Kashmir at the United Nations. The UN Security Council had earlier adopted a unanimous resolution seeking a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir. Street talk in the Valley jokes that Kashmir was traded for goshtaba. History is more complex, of course, but the anecdote endures because food and power often sit at the same table.
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, in his autobiography Aatish-e-Chinar, wrote of watching Soviet planes carrying Khrushchev fly over Kud prison, where he was detained. He believed the warmth extended in Srinagar would entangle Kashmir now in the superpower rivalry. Even behind bars, he understood the symbolism of a banquet.
In April 1985, food was tested again. Chief Minister Ghulam Mohammed Shah, facing political uncertainty after Congress withdrew support, invited Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to a feast at Jammu and Kashmir House in New Delhi. Master chefs and wazwan ingredients were flown in specially from Srinagar. Selected journalists attended. After dinner, when asked about the fate of Shah’s government, Gandhi signaled continued support. Wazwan, it was said, had steadied the ship.
Former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin once observed that the table is where power exerts influence, tensions ease, and relations are built.
All of which returns Delhi to its present culinary crossroads.
Banquet or Agriculture Exhibition
No one doubts the intention behind showcasing millets, indigenous grains, and vegetarian traditions. There is genuine pride in promoting sustainable crops and local produce. Millets are climate-resilient. Rajma from Munsyari carries a geographical indication tag. These are worthy stories.
But a state banquet is not an agricultural exhibition. It is an encounter between cultures.
Gastrodiplomacy is not a monologue delivered from a lectern disguised as a buffet. It is a conversation across a table. It requires listening to the palate opposite you. A banquet can be a cultural statement. It can also become, unintentionally, a test of endurance.
If a visiting president leaves a state dinner and orders room service, the optics are awkward. It suggests that while the speeches were full, the plates were not.
Diplomacy is about comfort. Sometimes that comfort lies in shared strategy. Sometimes it lies in shared bread, warm and plentiful.
Delhi’s power corridors may laugh about presidents ordering midnight meals. The anecdotes are amusing. Yet behind the humor lies a serious question. When India invites the world to its table, is it offering hospitality or a lecture in culinary nationalism?
In international relations, details linger. A well-seasoned dish can warm a relationship. A sparse plate, however, artfully described, can leave a chill.
The solution may not be to abandon rajma, millet, or white pumpkin soup. It may simply be to remember that generosity is also an ingredient. A menu card can recite poetry. But it cannot substitute for abundance.
After all, the way to a person’s heart still runs through the stomach. And in diplomacy, it is rarely wise to gamble on an empty one.
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