By Indrajit Lahiri
A recognisable pattern appears when you browse YouTube or Instagram. Millions of people watch foods that venture into uncharted terrain — chocolate pani puri, charcoal bun burgers, and extreme experiments like jalebi cheesecake jars. At the same time, ordinary Indian foods that are based on memory, work, and the seasons show up far less often in the same scroll.
This isn’t to say social media hasn’t helped authentic food. Migrants recreating regional dishes abroad, home cooks from small towns sharing family recipes, or creators documenting heirloom pickles and slow-cooked curries now reach audiences they never could before. For the first time, dishes from overlooked kitchens can compete with glossy, globalised trends.
Yet alongside this discovery, the algorithm quietly exerts influence at scale. What people pause, replay, or forward becomes a signal. Over time, these signals begin to look like taste itself.
Some foods travel faster and wider than others. Cheese pulls, glossy exaggerated sauces, sweet–savory mashups, or other bold combinations like Oreo pakoda shock and surprise, triggering dopamine. Attention is rewarded and engagement itself becomes the currency.
Meanwhile, subtler foods quietly struggle. Egg toast, poha, panta bhaat, chirer polao, suji halwa, doodh-sabu, ghoogni, cholar daal, and even pale stews, lightly spiced dals, steamed seasonal vegetables, and simple khichdis, rarely capture the same attention.
Many traditional dishes simply do not translate visually, and they are increasingly overlooked in city menus. Even street foods with understated flavours or textures can be missed, replaced by styled breads, croissant sandwiches or visually dramatic burgers.
Even traditional Indian desserts, which were formerly associated with ritual, season, or social custom, are now frequently redesigned to take better pictures – the restrained classics are replaced with tiered desserts, cheese-stuffed mithai, and oozing syrup masterpieces.
This bias doesn’t stay online. It shapes kitchens and menus. Chefs and restaurants now focus more on whether a dish can stop someone from scrolling rather than whether it is traditionally enjoyed. While viral foods draw guests in, they rarely entice them to stay.
Indian food has long followed local seasons, ingredients and rituals. Detach it from that, and it loses more than flavour — it loses context. Slow fermentation, inherited skill, careful preparation; they feel inconvenient when speed and spectacle dominate.
But there is a way forward. Narratives are important. Engagement increases when producers and eateries highlight the origins, makers, and purpose of a food. People don’t just watch. They return. They remember.
Social media can bring forgotten dishes to light, but it can also turn a cuisine into a gallery of spectacles. Indian food deserves critics who remember its past, understand its craft, and celebrate it for more than just what performs online.
(The author is the Founder & Host of Foodka)
