Came across this site which lists various dining in India.

http://www.gourmetindia.com/

Of course we would like to hear your India dining experiences here on FT.

The website you had posted here has hardly anything about India except the name and few reference. It is more Italian than Indian...Like Sonia Gandhi .

Due to the size and diverse culinary habits, you would never find a website giving you the names of the real dinning places in India. The places which will provide you true flavour of India tend to be smaller food joints / restaurants. So the best way is to get yourself familiarize with the cuisine and food from various parts of India which BTW is extensive task in itself. And once you know what you want in each part ask you Hotel helpdesk for a place offering clean and real ethnic food. One website which will help you learn Indian food is http://www.thokalath.com/cuisine/index.php.

Hope it helps others.

Why would you call Indian food "ethnic" in India?

In America, for instance, the term "ethnic" is used to refer
to mostly non-white cultural things. You don't find French
cuisine or Italian cuisines ever referred to as "ethnic," do
you?

In my view, if one is looking for "real, ethnic" food while
in India, he or she ought to be shown the way to an
Italian, French or a MacDonalds restaurant.

Per the dictionary and origin ethnic is a racial word used by Christians for non-christians. Few of the synonyms of this word are gentile, infidel, pagan, profane. However, later the word ethnic group was used as �a social group or category of the population that, in a larger society, is set apart and bound together by common ties of race, language, nationality, or culture�. Indian is extremely diverse country and each place has its own language, food and culture. That is the reason I call food of each region (or say each state), an ethnic food. Each region / state is a smaller sections of people among large Indian population held together by language, culture and food. Hence each place has its own ethnicity. Italian, French and McDonalds are not ethnic they are FOREIGN. Why non European foods are called ethnic in US is a phenomena similar to Africans being called African Americans, Latinos being called Hispanic where as European calling themselves Americans and not European Americans!!

You obviously did not reflect on what I had written. Let me try once more. The point is, the dictionary meanings that you cite are NOT applied consistently and across the board. "Ethnic" is the Westerner's terminology that has been imposed on the 'other' peoples. By assigning the label "ethnic" to the 'other' the effect is to immediately position the Western frame as the standard by which the 'other' is to be measured and evaluated. So, by adhering strictly to the dictionary meaning of the terms you run the risk of missing the forest for the trees.

There is a racist and/or imperial patina to the term "ethnic" as it is used today. I already gave you the example of the cuisines. There are good examples of this in other areas. Notice, how, for instance, musics from the non-Western, non-white regions are often categorised under "ethnic music." Then there are "ethnic" fashions. Have you come across French and Italian and American fashions so referred to? Why do you think that is the case?

Your analogies about African-Americans etc are misplaced. African-American is a label the blacks in America chose for themselves, it wasn't imposed on them. The term "ethnic" is a label imposed on us by the white Western world, and the Indians have mindlessly imbibed it.

That India is diverse and that there are different ethnicities that make for the Indian populations are well-known facts. But ethnicity does not correspond to culture and cuisine. To give you one example, Maharasthrians come in different ethnicities but Maharashtrian cuisine does not map to any one ethnicity - there's the Kolhapuri cuisine, the Malwani cuisine, the Bombay cuisine and so on.

Bottomline: we have homegrown terms to categorise and describe our diverse cultural artifacts without having to seek recourse to the term "ethnic."

There is no point getting trapped in to the way Americans/ Westerner would use the word �Ethnic�. In the broader picture even the violence in the East European (white) countries was called Ethnic violence because smaller groups were fighting with each other. When one group tries to annihilate another it is called Ethnic cleansing, regardless of where it happens. In recent times the meaning and usage of this word has changed from what it was or used to be. Another way of looking at it is if we adopt (even if �mindlessly�) a negative word and start a more positive usage, the negativity will be lost over a period of time (to the frustration of the originator). So rather than sweating it out, I feel more subtle and suitable reply to Americans was the positive adoption of the word by international community. The racial meaning of the word is lost forever. However if you like to use �Local Cuisine� be my guest!!!