Washington Post Gene Weingarten apologizes for insulting Indian food in opinion column

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In the Aug. 19 piece titled “You Can’t Make Me Eat These Foods,” Weingarten marked several foods in which he turned his nose, such as Old Bay condiments, hazelnuts, and anchovies, among others. Regarding Indian food, he wrote that “If you like Indian curry, yes, you like Indian food!”

The illustration at the top of the column depicts a mustachioed man with a bib who literally turns his nose with a spoonful of food offered to him.

“I don’t understand it, as a culinary principle,” he added. “It’s as if the French were passing a law that required every dish to be crushed into crushed and pureed snails.”

These statements provoked a backlash from critics who said it was inaccurate and ruled out. American Indian author and model Padma Lakshmi, who hosts Bravo’s “Top Chef” and Hulu’s “Taste the Nation.” he tweeted, “What is white nonsense ™ ️?” American Indian actress and screenwriter Mindy Kaling he tweeted“You don’t like cooking? Very well. But it’s so weird to feel proud to challenge you that you don’t like cooking. In silence, you can’t like something either.”

Weingarten tweeted Monday on Twitter and acknowledged his column was “insulting.”

“From beginning to end plus the island, the column talked about what I’m a crying child ignorant,” Weingarten he tweeted. “I should have called it a single Indian dish, not the whole kitchen, and I see how that broad brush was insulting. Excuse me (also, yes, curries are mixtures of spices, not spices).”

After posting this story, Weingarten told CNN Business that he thought “people wouldn’t take this column seriously because I didn’t take myself seriously.”

“It was a miscalculation, and what I did realize I hadn’t noticed before (there should have been) was that the Indian food product was different from all the others,” he added. “All the others were specific foods. Even the tongue on the cheek, it didn’t condemn an ​​entire ethnic cuisine and I think that made it stand out. I understand why people are upset about it.”

The Post also modified the column with a correction at the top and removed inaccuracies.

“An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Indian cuisine is based on one species, curry and that Indian food is only made up of curry, kind of stew,” the correction says. “In fact, the extensive cuisines of India use many spice blends and include many other types of dishes. The article has been corrected.”

A Post spokesman declined to comment beyond sharing the correction.

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