Mocked for eating with their hands in ‘authentic’ establishments, many South Asians are turning their backs on fine dining. Hamza Shehryar investigates the colonial attitudes lurking behind Western restaurant etiquette.

“I don’t do fine dining anymore. The last time I did, I ended up feeling so uncomfortable that I had to leave,” says Duaa Noor, a 31-year-old insights advisor from Islamabad. Her discomfort stemmed from choosing to eat, like most South Asians, with her hands instead of cutlery. “People looked at me like I was crazy. It was like: ‘Oh my god, I have to look a certain way, and I can’t get my fingers dirty or my hands oily’.” 

Refraining from dining out at gourmet restaurants puts Noor at odds with most people around the world. With the post-Covid return to normalcy coupled with the release of a plethora of hugely successful food-based films and TV series in the last two years – The Bear, Emily in Paris, Boiling Point, and the Oscar-nominated The Taste of Things, just to name a few – fine dining is as popular as it has ever been. 

Data gathered in 2023 by Toast, a leading platform providing tools and equipment for restaurants, shows that 45 per cent of individuals surveyed said they dined out multiple times a week last year. This figure rises to 62 per cent for Gen Z respondents. Fine dining establishments, in particular, saw a 5 per cent increase in popularity from the previous year, becoming the second most favoured classification of eatery, behind only ‘quick service’ restaurants in 2023, all around the world. 

While the enduring culture of celebrating international food culture through gastronomic experiences is becoming more prevalent with every passing day, for many South Asians like Noor, it is an experience that can be everything but inclusive.  

Classist Attitudes:

“There’s an expectation to act and talk in a certain way, even if you don’t really have to talk that way. You’re putting up a face. A status symbol,” says Noor, explaining how bothersome fine-dining culture can be. While her perspective could be attributed to the more general criticism of the snobbish pomposity plaguing fine dining culture, Noor elaborates on how it is eating with her hands – a tradition rooted in South Asian history – that keeps catches the ire of many patrons every time she visits an upscale eatery.

“There’s this expectation to be refined and sophisticated. And I don’t know how using your hands isn’t refined and sophisticated”

Duaa Noor

She likens eating Pakistani food with utensils to eating pizza with knives and forks. “You’re just not supposed to do that,” she remarks, later mentioning that she has not dined at a fancy restaurant since December last year, principally because of the culturally insensitive pretentiousness imposed over the food served.  

Experiences like Noor’s are not isolated. Nathen Muckatira, a 23-year-old graduate in environmental sciences from Bangalore, who now lives in Dubai, recollects perpetual feelings of discomfort when seated in fine-dining restaurants. “As a South Indian, I’ve been raised to eat Indian food with my hands,” says Muckatira. He likens being told how to eat ‘with civility’ to being spoken down to as if you’re a child. 

Eating with one’s hands, as opposed to with cutlery, maintains an unsettling history that goes back to the days of colonialism. The use of cutlery underpinned the class divide between the occupying British Empire’s wealthy elite and the proletariat, who were considered subordinate and unrefined for their eating habits.

Classist divisions underpinned the British Raj and were an enduring part of the Empire’s exclusionary ‘divide and rule’ strategy, which persisted for the almost century-long rule of the British Crown over the Indian subcontinent. These attitudes continue to endure – in part because of the ceremonial attitudes surrounding fine-dining culture.

“There’s this expectation to be refined and sophisticated. And I don’t know how using your hands isn’t refined and sophisticated,” says Noor. 

In-authentic Authenticity:

A recurring criticism of fine-dining culture from people across the subcontinent is the whitewashing of South Asian cuisine to conform to international tastes – particularly when served in institutions that claim to serve authentic food.

“Food should be eaten in the way that it was meant to be eaten because, at the end of the day, the person who has created the dish knows how to best enjoy it”

Arwa AlHamdani

Arwa AlHamdani, a 19-year-old student based in London, looks forward to visiting the countless dhabas – roadside cafés – scattered across the bustling streets of Karachi every time she goes to the city to visit her grandmother. 

She has become disillusioned by the spurious South Asian food served in ‘authentic’ fine-dining restaurants in the West, stripped of the spices and characteristics that underpin the cuisine. “It’s disrespectful and does not appreciate the food for what it really is,” she says. 

AlHamdani takes particular issue with how South Asian culinary traditions are diluted and, sometimes, entirely erased, to cater to Western palates. “Food should be eaten in the way that it was meant to be eaten because, at the end of the day, the person who has created the dish knows how to best enjoy it,” she opines.

She believes that fine dining should represent opportunities to “be appreciative of different cultures and enjoy authentic experiences”, instead of taking away from the history of what “our ancestors went through”.

“Pakistani food culture is all about abundance, not just with food, but with the atmosphere too, and I think fine dining completely kills it,” she says. “Some fine dining establishments I’ve been to charge £20 for four small pieces of chicken tikka. Once you’ve had the real thing from a dhaba, it’s laughable when you think about it.

“All the years that have gone into the cultivation of this food are lost, and the essence of South Asian food culture itself is absent in the very places that exist to celebrate it.”

There is a twisted irony in paying astronomic prices for gastronomic experiences of paltry servings of overly sophisticated food. Such criticisms of fine-dining culture are not limited to South Asians but are echoed internationally, with Mark Mylod’s 2022 film The Menu being one of many recent movies that satirically explores this bizarre reality. 

This surrealism becomes much nastier, however, when garnished with the prevailing classist and colonial attitudes that limit the rich history of South Asian food culture to spurious butter chicken and vindaloo curries, interspersed between poppadoms and kulfis.