Foreign food that caters to local tastes

Notice the stylized font for CHINESE on the cart. It is enough to suggest that street food in China now offers expats a menu they can understand.

But sadly, no. It is of a roadside stall in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, where there are thousands of such dining options.

I sometimes find it hard to convince my Chinese friends that their food is ubiquitous in India - albeit they will not be able to recognize smell, taste, texture nor indeed the names of the dishes.

From the 1960s to the '90s, even in small towns, Chinese was the default choice for foreign food. You either picked one of the many varieties of Indian food or went Chinese. Many corporate or college parties were rounded off with Chinese.

In top hotels in Indian cities, where a five-star rating mandates a foreign-food restaurant, the choice was inevitably Chinese and mostly Sichuan, typically spelt Szechuan.

India's own "reform and opening-up" in the 1990s spawned Western, Thai and Mexican restaurants, but Chinese still holds its place in the Indian heart.

This century has seen a new trend in serving Chinese to the affluent and well-traveled Indian: Indo-Chinese cuisine, featuring food by well-known chefs from China and around the region.

The old "Szechuan" food is still there in these top restaurants, but it has been supplanted by the delicate flavors of fusion food.

A few restaurant chains have also come up in major cities with high prices, long waiting times and "authentic" food.

Indian food historians attribute the widespread availability of Chinese food in the country to the migration of thousands of Hakka people in the late 18th century to Calcutta - now Kolkata - then the capital of British India.

The city was the closest to be accessible overland. The migrants brought with them many skills, mainly tanneries, shoemaking and dentistry - and sauce-making and food, which spread to the rest of the country.

The tanneries gradually disappeared under tough environmental laws and the dentists mostly migrated, but the food remains in various forms.

Come evening, the owner of the cart in the photo will be busy selling chow mein, fried rice and fried noodles, which the Chinese here will not recognize.

The Indians don't care. That's the only Chinese food most know - and love.

Contact the writer at ravi@chinadaily.com.cn