New Delhi, Nov. 15 -- "There are," wrote Julian Barnes with the certainty born of experience in The Pendant in the Kitchen, "certain dishes always best eaten in restaurants, however tempting the cookbook version appears." As a Barnes fan, I have taken his advice to heart and cook as little and as rarely as possible for myself. I'm one of those "evolving consumers" that restaurant industry reports gleefully describe as responsible for "India's dining boom", a phenomenon of the past 15 years.

In India, as Camellia Panjabi explains in her new book Vegetables: The Indian Way, eating out is a relatively new practice, and five-star hotels began upgrading their menus only in the 1970s as the government encouraged them to attract tourists and ea...