It contrives to be part history, part guidebook, part cookbook, and part personal prejudice. I'm partly satisfied.
Written by a frequent visitor to Delhi, the book sets out to explain "the story of Delhi through its food". It is generously structured, contriving to be part history, part guidebook, part cookbook, and part personal prejudice. I’m partly satisfied. O’Brien scores on the first three aspects: she’s done her research, more or less understood the geographical, historical and cultural enormity that’s Delhi, and clearly likes the city’s food. The first three chapters treat of Delhi history qua food; the rest make up more conventional categories—regional cuisine, street food and more. Recipes typical of each category punctuate each chapter.
It’s a competent volume. But what makes it charming is O’Brien’s food-feeling towards it. Happily disinterested as a non-resident, she doesn’t waste time charting Delhi’s emergence from supposed gastronomical hell, and is measured in her descriptions of the new eating-out options; the classic Delhi-food polemic is given the go-by. O’Brien’s real interest is in locating the city’s ‘local flavours’; it follows that users of her ‘guidebook’ will spend a lot of time in that other city called Old Delhi—the setting of so many of the histories that she describes.
I’m unsure of the book’s usefulness as a restaurant guide, since O’Brien eschews comprehensiveness for recommendations (some questionable). The casual visitor to Delhi should leave both gratified and edified.