Do you find that when you travel to the West, the food tastes bland and boring?

I do.

I never used to feel that way, but in recent years, I have begun to long for masalas and at least a hint of chilli whenever I travel to Europe.

I was never, in my youth, the sort of man who could not live without masala. Many years of English boarding school and university accommodation taught me how to survive for months on end without the flavours of Indian food. When other Indian students used to tell me that they had dal cravings, I knew what they meant, but was able to say, in all honesty, that this was not something that bothered me unduly.

But, the older I get, the more Indian my palate becomes. I now find most Western food incredibly boring and often tasteless, especially if I have to eat it for more than three or four days at a stretch.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate food that does not rely on spices. I still pride myself on being able to go to a French restaurant and hold forth on whether it deserves its Michelin star or not. I can see why French is regarded as the classic cuisine. I can even eat English food, which surely, is an achievement in itself.

But when I go to the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, when I eat in many European countries, I wonder why they can’t make food that is more interesting. Even when it comes to great restaurants, there is only a certain number of Michelin-starred meals you can eat in a week. By the end of the week, you want something that jolts your taste buds.

Oddly enough, I feel this most acutely when I am travelling in the Middle East. A decade ago, I outraged food writers in the rest of the world when I wrote that the food of the Middle East is essentially a rough first draft for Indian cuisine. Turkish kebabs may be wonderful but they are no match for the Indian versions because they lack the spices that make our kebabs so special. Likewise with the food of Morocco. I loved the country when I went there last year, but the food held no attraction for me. Much of it was sickly sweet. How can you sit by and watch them sprinkle powdered sugar on a savoury pie? Even when the chefs were going easy on the sugar, their flavours were flabby and badly in need of the muscular thrust of a strong Indian masala. (Not getting a Moroccan visa again, I am sure.)

In fact, the problem is most acute in the Middle East. A lot of the food looks vaguely familiar. Kebabs, tagines, pilafs and the rest should be more appealing to Indians. In fact, because they look right but lack the spicy flavours we are used to, they seem like imposters, bland imitations of the real thing.

Mine is a chauvinistic and parochial view, I concede. After all, Indian cuisine is not the only great cuisine in the world. And Western food writers, Brits in particular, go into raptures describing the flavours of the Middle East. From my perspective, however, I am never sure what they’re raving about. It only makes sense when I realise that the English put raisins and apples in curries in their own country. Clearly, their palates are very different from mine.

Lately, I find that this intolerance of bland food has become more acute. Last week, on holiday in Greece, I went to a very pleasant restaurant and ordered a series of small plates. Each time I ordered something like a dish of meatballs, my server said to me, warningly, “This is very spicy; are you sure you want it?”

This did not have the effect he intended, because I got very excited and kept asking what other spicy dishes were available. When the food arrived, I was bitterly disappointed. None of the dishes that he had warned me about were at all spicy. Admittedly, they were not desserts in the manner of Morrocan dishes, but they were boringly bland.

In fact, in my experience, the food of France and Italy is far superior to anything I have ever eaten in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. With French cuisine, you don’t really expect spice so you admire the delicacy of the cooking and the way in which the ingredients are treated.

I make an exception for Italian cuisine because it manages to please Indian palates in unexpected ways. For years I wondered what it was that made Indians enjoy Italian dishes that should otherwise be considered bland.I think I now have the answer: Italian food is packed with umami flavours. Tomatoes and Parmigiano cheese are ingredients that appeal to us even without spices. And we like the garlic in Italian dishes; one reason why Spaghetti Aglio Olio is among the most popular pastas at any Italian restaurant in India.

I imagine the same is true of our attitude to Japanese cuisine, which usually does not contain much spice. We like it because of the umami flavours. The kind of Japanese food we eat is packed with soya sauce, a rich source of umami.

For Indians umami has emerged as an acceptable alternative to the tang of spices. It’s the reason why Chinese food, (even without the chilies we often add), is the most popular non-Indian cuisine at restaurants in our country.

What is it about the Indian palate? Why are we so obsessed with spices? You could argue, as many in the West do, that years of eating chilli have dulled our taste buds and that we only like loud and assertive flavours.

That’s may be fair, but before we get too judgemental, we should remember that two centuries ago, Europe was even more in love with spices than we are today . Europeans came to Asia searching for black pepper, (called black gold by the English) and other Indian spices. In those days, only the rich could afford spices in the West and they were considered a sign of great wealth and sophistication.

Nobody is certain why the West gave up on spices. The explanation usually offered, that as spices became easier to procure from the colonies and prices came down, they ceased to be a sign of wealth and were no longer favoured by the rich, has never struck me as being convincing.

What we do know is that long before curry became a staple of the British high street, many members of the English aristocracy continued to enjoy Indian flavours. For instance George V, the grandfather of the late Queen Elizabeth II, insisted that curry was cooked every day at Buckingham Palace. Even Queen Elizabeth often asked her chefs to make curry, though her favourite was a mild curry. The dish created to mark Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, the famous Coronation Chicken, depended on curry powder for its tang.

So, perhaps we Indians apologise too much for our love of masala and chilies. In fact, much of the West is falling in love with spicy flavours. The largest market for chilli sauce, for example, is the United States, where chilli sauces of one kind or another (including spicy salsa) routinely outsell ketchup. The British claim curry as their own: The late Robin Cook, when he was Foreign Secretary, joked that Chicken Tikka Masala was the national dish of Britain. The fastest growing Chinese cuisine in the West is Sichuan which is chilli-based. In America, the craze for Japanese food is gradually being replaced by an obsession with Korean cuisine, which relies on chilli pastes.

So Indians are not the only people to feel this way. A year ago, I flew on Saudia airlines to Morocco. The service was outstanding and the food was delicious, but I still felt that something was lacking. Saudia has a chef on board, so I asked him if he had any harissa or any other spicy North African sauce. He turned out to be an Indonesian and regretted that no harissa had been loaded onto the plane. “I know how you feel,” he said understandingly, and produced a vial of an Indonesian spice powder, which he said he carried around to spice up his own meals on board.

Inspired by his example, I have often wondered if I should carry my own masalas with me on international flights. Unfortunately, security regulations prevent me from taking my own pickle or chilli sauce on board, but I’m pretty sure that if I think hard enough I will find a way to do it.

So, should we be apologetic for finding the food of the West too bland? Should we say sorry because we always want spice and more than a hint of chilli in our food?

Of course not. Chillies are part of culture and spices are our heritage.

Far from being apologetic, we should be proud. We should uphold our cuisine tradition and take chilies everywhere we go. We should find ways of adding spice not just to food but to life itself.

It’s what being Indian is about.

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