All eyes have been on India this week as the India AI Impact Summit positions Delhi at the centre of a global technological conversation.
The scale of it is visible everywhere. Roads leading towards Bharat Mandapam swell with traffic; hotel entrances resemble diplomatic corridors; conversations drift between policy, possibility and partnership. For a few days, the capital has functioned as a stage upon which India presents its technological ambition to the world.
When such attention converges on one venue, representation becomes layered. It is not only policy that is on display, but culture — and food, inevitably, becomes part of that narrative.
Across the city, that responsibility has been handled with discernment. Leading hotels have curated satellite dinners and private gatherings that extend the summit beyond formal sessions. Restaurants have stepped into the role of cultural interlocutors. At Indian Accent, the language of modern Indian cuisine continues to balance technical precision with rooted memory. At Nisaba, chef Manish Mehrotra’s newly opened restaurant, regional Indian cuisines are presented with nuance — dishes that articulate geography, seasonality and inheritance without spectacle. In these spaces, Indian food is intentional. It sets a context.
Within Bharat Mandapam itself, however, the experience has been more utilitarian than thoughtful.
The summit’s open-access format has ensured significant footfall — students, young graduates, entrepreneurs, media and senior executives navigating the same food counters. While there are numerous quick-service options available, the infrastructure appears stretched. Access to something as basic as bottled water has reportedly required queuing first at a payment counter — at times fifty people deep — before joining another line to collect the bottle. The process has overtaken hospitality.
These details may appear logistical, but they matter. They shape the rhythm of participation and the memory of the space. More significantly, the main venue presented a rare opportunity to position India’s culinary excellence alongside its technological prowess — and that opportunity feels only partially realised.
India today is home to chefs who are, in many ways, global culinary ambassadors. Figures such as chef Prateek Sadhu, whose work foregrounds terroir and indigenous ingredients; chef Hussain Shahzad, who has helped redefine contemporary Indian fine dining; and chef Niyati Rao, representing a new generation of precise, globally conversant culinary voices — these are professionals who carry India’s gastronomic narrative to international platforms with authority.
One could reasonably imagine a dedicated culinary pavilion within the summit venue: curated tastings, moderated conversations on regional cuisines, artisanal coffee and tea producers presenting India’s growing beverage excellence. Such a space would not merely serve food; it would articulate identity. It would allow delegates — domestic and international — to engage with India’s culinary landscape as seriously as they engage with its technology ecosystem.
As Shouvik Das, a member of the Indian media covering the summit, notes:
"At Bharat Mandapam, the food experience betrays a lack of foresight. Despite multiple counters, the process is cumbersome — purchasing something as basic as bottled water requires queuing at a payment desk that can stretch fifty people long, only to stand in yet another line to collect it. For a summit positioning India at the forefront of global innovation, such inefficiencies are telling. With students, professionals and international delegates converging under one roof, better planning and curated culinary representation were not luxuries, but necessities. Instead, an opportunity to project India’s food culture with confidence has been diminished by avoidable disarray."
Delhi has demonstrated, in its restaurants and hotel dining rooms this week, how effectively cuisine can operate as soft power — sophisticated, assured and globally relevant. As India continues to host summits of international consequence, the integration of its leading culinary voices into the main stage itself would not be ornamental. It would be strategic.
In a nation where food is both memory and modernity, the table deserves a seat in the conversation.