The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : The Man Who Ate Everything

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 04, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

The Man Who Ate Everything

Susan Muthalaly

Food critic Jeffrey Steingarten is in the country to write on Indian food Food critic Jeffrey Steingarten is here to write on Indian food

CHENNAI: `The Man Who Ate Everything' is in India, attempting to eat everything in just a few days. American Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten, ensconced in a lobster red armchair at the swank Taj Coromandel lobby, sips unselfconsciously on a tall glass of Kingfisher draught beer licking away the frothy white moustache on his upper lip at every sip.

Comfortable with food

Author of The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must've Been Something I Ate: The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything (compilations of his Vogue articles), he is comfortable with food.

He doesn't shy away from the potato wafer bowl to save his appetite for the good stuff at dinner.

And, as the titles of his books suggest, Mr. Steingarten is no food snob; he is known to love his Milky Way bars and candy.

But, his intolerance of anything that's detrimental to the world as he wants it becomes clear soon enough, so bad restaurants had best keep out of his plate.

He speaks four languages, although he says that in French, Spanish and Italian there are only about 235 food words ["I just made that up"] you need to know.

"Stir, pour, scrape, cut, chop ... there's a limited number of things you can do to an object that was once alive."

Mr. Steingarten is here to write a story on food in India.

"I expect it would be an article for Vogue as they are paying. If I don't give them an article they'll probably be very grumpy," he says.

People didn't understand why he had to come to India to eat Indian food.

There are plenty of Indian restaurants back home in New York, where he says the food is bad. "I'm interested in finding out more about food here, though my time is very limited."

On this trip (his fourth), he was in Kerala, swooning over the snapper purchased in Fort Cochin by the Chinese fishing nets, describing it as unbelievably fresh.

"I've eaten snapper right out of the water, but this had so much flavour."

He also loved the chutneys at Murugan idli shop at T.Nagar.

Mr. Steingarten and his wife, Caron Smith, intend to let their palates explore Mahabalipuram, and then it's back to Mumbai.

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