The great Indian food trip: around a subcontinent a la carte

The Great Indian Food Trip is an entertaining and erudite adventure through culinary landscapes, showing how three decades of eating, drinking and travelling have helped Zac O'Yeah to understand India, his home of many years.

This fast-paced yet profound account charts a writer's untiring quest for new cultural and culinary experiences. We accompany O'Yeah on a 'spare parts' tour of Shivajinagar, Bengaluru's slaughterhouse area. He shares the pleasures of drinking beer in Karnataka, toddy in Kerala; eating boiled vegetables and masala-less curries in the Mahatma's ashram, and savouring the rich red lal maas (spiced goat) of princely Rajasthan. He discovers Goa's literati sipping cashew feni with Orhan Pamuk and Amitav Ghosh, and finds two of his favourite foods-mushrooms and cheese- in Bhutan's shamudatsi.

Whether you're a lover of Indian cuisine, at home or abroad, or a wanderer seeking inspiration for your own voyage of discovery, this multi-course meal promises many delightful surprises about India's delicacies, their origins and their locales. O'Yeah captures India in a nutshell-a big, coconut-sized one.