These days, food blogging has become extremely popular amongst desis in India. While some people choose this field as their full-time career choice, a few of them do it as their hobby. Aaj-kal gali-gali mein food bloggers hain! Sometimes, many food bloggers promote freaking crazy recipes that makes us wanna puke as we wonder why on earth would someone relish that. Most of them also come up with new vegetarian alternatives to non-vegetarian cuisines ‘coz eating soya chaap has now become passé.
A Twitter user, @SrushtiGangdev recently called out such food bloggers by sharing an example of a weird dish consisting chana and butter chicken in its name. That’s actually a legit vegan recipe called chickpea butter chicken.

No susan that’s not “chickpea butter chicken”, it’s channa masala and it was already a thing (sic).
-Srushti Gangdev
Check out the tweet here:
pet peeve: when food bloggers make up vegetarian alternatives to indian meat dishes, when indian food already has the most delicious veg and vegan cuisine in the world. no susan that’s not “chickpea butter chicken”, it’s channa masala and it was already a thing
— Srushti Gangdev (@SrushtiGangdev) August 5, 2022
Here’s how netizens are reacting to this opinion:
They do what now?
— Noah J. Nelson (@noahjnelson) August 6, 2022
I swear to the One Above if I found someone committing such blasphemy about channa masala I’d curse them to eat only from the McDonald’s value menu.
Channa masala is perfect and must be cherished. https://t.co/JUtnSc03jW
Yes I went to restaurant last week & menu was like this. Butter chicken & blah blah Went to order, it was explained to me then that this is veg restaurant & the chicken is soy products? I really didn’t know what to say so I left. I don’t understand why they do do creative names?
— Dhilnav (@dhilnav) August 5, 2022
Hate it when ppl do this— most cuisines across the world have delicious and varied offer is which may or may not be vegan. You could simply choose to look for that and respect it, but instead people usually make food worse and then call it something it’s not… for ad views https://t.co/dQIwYWelVT
— saph (@Saph0000) August 7, 2022
gonna start calling onion rings “onion fried calamari” https://t.co/JpyjRDU2Ve
— Conor Thompson (@CPiGuy55) August 7, 2022
literally saw vegan omelette as a dish and it’s just chila. English name means price x10 😭 https://t.co/XYyJNWvram
— Kitchen Beat @@ (@kitchenbeat10) August 7, 2022
FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT https://t.co/GswdnR5mWO
— 🦋Dawood Qureshi🐬 they/she 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 (@GoWildForBees) August 7, 2022
Dosas and cheela being described as vegan lentil wraps will never not ruin my day everytime I come across them. https://t.co/8sCrgZp4OW
— Diksha (@DikshaOjha) August 7, 2022
I was trying to look up dosa yesterday and the first THREE pages of google results were full of white lady cooking blogs like “try this one ingredient lentil wrap/tortilla!” the word dosa wasn’t even IN their postings, why (sic)?!
-@soup_remacy
THIS im so fucking mad when ppl are like there isn’t any good vegetarian foods when indian food is right there https://t.co/CIZy69sgeU
— jiha joestar (@firelorrd) August 7, 2022
THIS this annoys me so much!!! https://t.co/PyXAhQnBlB
— BACK INTO THE NEW WORLD (@ConsultinWerew1) August 7, 2022
tbh this is my issue with a lot of (white) vegan and vegetarian food content. Non-meat foods and dishes already exist and are *very* good on their own. https://t.co/d8GVLBWGIY
— CJ jr. (@theKelizabeth82) August 7, 2022
How are those people real? https://t.co/vLmh2UBn0f
— Lolodomor (@Lolodomor) August 7, 2022
Been seeing a lot of yt bloggers doing this. Thought I was the only one annoyed. This includes forcing a lot of global south people to go completely vegan without understanding colonial/imperial/capitalist history (sic).
-@enrqzpatricia
people actually do this lmao 😭 most indian foods alr have veg alternatives too like the same dish but veg cuz so much of the population is vegetarian. just replace the meat with paneer and boom vegetarian alternative 💥 https://t.co/oWRc5F3XOh
— Samika 🌸‼️pr0ship DNI‼️ (@PastelPandaBear) August 6, 2022
India’s is the only cuisine in my experience that can deliver a multi-course vegetarian meal so satisfying that I don’t even notice the absence of meat https://t.co/qq3QExLZjn
— Is This Hell? (@WattleOfBits) August 6, 2022
As someone that has a food blog, the number of non south asian bloggers i’ve seen make ‘stuffed potato bread’ miss girl it’s literally aloo paratha (sic).
-@folklorelais
Now check out a video of chickpea butter chicken recipe here. It’s “an easy, loaded with flavor, butter chickpea curry (which) will rival any butter chicken that you have ever tasted,” the description of the clip reads on YouTube.
Dude, it’s basically chana masala or chhole masala. Butter chicken ke naam par dhokha hai ye. What’s the point of food bloggers promoting chana masala with the name of chickpea butter chicken when chana masala and butter chicken, the two dishes are poles apart in terms of taste, flavour, ingredients, and look? Vegan ke naam par kuch bhi haan?