India, Sept. 6 -- There are many international cuisines that are difficult to find in India. You will not be surprised to learn that it's hard to come across a good Spanish restaurant. Or to eat Ethiopian food. But here's one that may surprise you: It's immensely difficult to find Chinese food in India. I see you staring at the preceding paragraph incredulously. Is this man mad? You mutter to yourself. Does he not know that Chinese is the single most popular foreign cuisine in India? That there is a Chinese restaurant at every corner in every Indian city? What is he talking about? Bear with me. Because the truth is that real Chinese food is almost impossible to find at India's Chinese restaurants. Yes, they serve what they claim is Chinese food. But it is completely inauthentic. No Chinese person would recognise it. The first Chinese restaurants opened in Calcutta because there was an expatriate Chinese community there from the early years of the 20th century. The local Chinese worked out quite quickly that they would get nowhere by serving the food they actually made at home, so they adapted the menus of American Chinese restaurants and added Indian touches. More Chicken Sweet Corn Soup has always been consumed in any medium-sized Indian town than is eaten in the whole of China. And though Chilli Chicken has been a menu staple in India for 60 years, it is unknown in China because it was invented in Calcutta. Over the last 30 years or so, Chinese food has become so ubiquitous in India that the restaurateur Nelson Wang, who probably invented Chicken Manchurian in Mumbai, says that Indian-Chinese should be regarded as a completely distinct cuisine from anything eaten in China. Which is fine. I loathe Sino-Ludhianvi food, with its Punjabi masalas and its thick, red sauces. But people have a perfect right to enjoy it. Authenticity always comes second to flavour. And if millions of Indians think it is delicious then good for them. It's not as though people have never tried to make the real thing. When the House of Ming opened in Delhi in 1978, the Taj group, which had brought Sichuan food to India, tried to be authentic. But such was the pressure from its Punjabi clientele that compromises had to be made with authenticity. And within a few years, House of Ming became House of Singh. I venture to suggest that all that may finally be changing. As more and more Indians travel abroad and discover that masala Hakka noodles are not integral to Chinese cuisine, there is finally some demand for real Chinese food. The trendsetter was the Hyatt chain, which opened two excellent restaurants in 2006: Delhi's The China Kitchen and Mumbai's China House. Over the years, the food at China House has journeyed to Kathmandu and back, but The China Kitchen remains an island of excellence, serving world-class Sichuan food. Other hotel chains have followed Hyatt's lead. Even the House of Ming is back on form, serving food that is much less Indianised: A London branch is packing them in. But the trendsetter has been the Oberoi group. When the Oberoi New Delhi reopened in 2018 after a complete makeover, it boasted of Baoshuan, a modern Chinese restaurant mentored by Andrew Wong, whose London restaurant is the only Chinese restaurant outside East Asia to earn two Michelin stars. Despite a clamour for more familiar dishes, the Oberois held firm, and the restaurant is now a huge success. Last week, the group opened Madam Chow at the Oberoi Gurugram. The menu takes in most of China's regions, includes very good dim sum, authentic Peking Duck, and many dishes that may not be familiar to Indian diners. It's a risk to try and be authentic in Gurugram, which has always been a culinary wasteland without a single good Chinese restaurant. But, to my surprise, the first reactions to Madam Chow have been almost ecstatic. It is widely talked about and has become a name to drop not just in Gurugram, but in neighbouring Delhi as well. Given that the menu makes no concessions to Punjabification and that the flavours are subtle and nuanced, this is not just an achievement for the Oberois but a breakthrough for authenticity in a market usually regarded as unresponsive to quality. The problem with all this is that while very good restaurants like Madam Chow can succeed, they can only do it at the deluxe end of the market. You can get authentic Chinese food at five-star hotels - even in Ahmedabad, where ITC's Yi Jing is outstanding. But you won't easily get it in the standalone sector. The restaurants that have tried to serve the real thing have usually had to give up and cater to local tastes. Bengaluru's Cantan, for example, was very good when it first opened, until the demands of the market intervened. So what do you do if you want an authentic Chinese meal and don't want to pay hotel prices? My solution, when I am looking for something affordable, is to eat dim sum. For some reason dim sum seem to have journeyed to India without the obligatory halt in Ludhiana. The local dim sum places inspired by London restaurants - Yauatcha and the Royal Chinas - are usually reliable. But it may all just be a matter of time. Junk Chinese was invented in America and when the real thing did reach the US, it was confined to expensive restaurants. But slowly and surely, the cuisine trickled down to less expensive places. Some of this has to do with demographics. A younger generation of diners became tired of eating chop sewage and looked for the real thing. At the same time, younger generations of restaurateurs and chefs got fed up of cooking junk and looked to China to discover what the real cuisine was like. Or, take the example of the British curry house, where both diners and chefs wearied of eating bogus vindaloos. Now more authentic Indian restaurants are opening. I imagine that something similar will happen with Chinese food in India. We just have to be patient....