As with any group of people, South Asians and their food and culture are not monoliths. This vast region encompasses seven countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. And each country features a wealth of regional and hyper-regional cuisines.
Until recently, no resource delved deep into the culinary regionality of South Asian food and restaurants found throughout metro Atlanta or the geopolitical, socioeconomic, and demographic influences shaping what these restaurants serve.
But that changed with Atlanta Gastro Carta and its complex system of mapping South Asian restaurants in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
Abhik Banerjee, a faculty member at Georgia State University Perimeter College, who graduated last summer after defending his thesis at the Department of English at Georgia State University (GSU), founded Atlanta Gastro Carta. He developed the mapping project through the university’s EPIC (experiential project-based interdisciplinary curriculum) program.
EPIC projects combine history, technology, art, and science, and tend to explore the history of Atlanta from multiple perspectives and cultural sectors. Current and past examples include the ongoing mapping of the Krog Street Tunnel and a mapping project of the Civil Rights Trail. The EPIC program examines a cultural or historical phenomenon through various lenses, making it an apt fit for a dynamic and culturally diverse city like Atlanta.
For his EPIC project, Banerjee devised the idea for mapping South Asian foodways in and around Atlanta.
“The major reason behind this project was my decade-long interest in exploring how food ingredients and style of cooking speak about a community [or] culture in a particular geographical space,” he said.
Banerjee was exposed to different styles of Indian cooking growing up in Durgapur and Kolkata in the West Bengal region of India. He lived in Delhi before moving to Atlanta to pursue his PhD at GSU. Banerjee’s affinity for Anthony Bourdain’s television series “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown” influenced him to pursue a project that examined the overlap between geopolitics and gastronomy.
After working with his mentor, Brennan Collins, the Associate Director of Writing Across the Curriculum and the Center for Instructional Effectiveness, on a separate mapping project creating a UNESCO World Heritage Civil Rights Trail proposal, Banerjee suggested the South Asian foodways map.
“Atlanta, especially metropolitan Atlanta areas serving food from countries around the world, not just South Asia, has been critical behind the birth of this project,” Banerjee explained.
“Abhik has always been a delight to work with,” Collins said of his mentee. “His time on the UNESCO project gave him a basic idea about the possibilities of maps and storytelling.”
The project, which aims to explore South Asian food culture in Atlanta, is nearly three years old now, and still ongoing. Banerjee also explored trends including a hegemony of Indian restaurants in Atlanta and how the COVID-19 pandemic affected local South Asian restaurants’ income and management. A highly interactive map made an ideal medium for the study — this enabled him to illustrate how the demographics and locations of the South Asian populations influenced the growth of South Asian restaurants in metro Atlanta.
The most time-consuming part was collecting the data, and the team of at least 20 GSU undergraduate students over multiple semesters also had to learn how to use the ArcGIS mapping platform software. Banerjee is especially grateful to Tahla Ansari, a computer science major who stayed on the project for a few semesters.
But the years of effort more than justify the work, even if Atlanta’s explosive restaurant scene makes the map an endeavor that needs regular updating.
“Students tend to think of data as just facts that exist, as opposed to information that is gathered in a particular way that can then be used to tell stories and make arguments,” Collins said.
Accumulating data, however, shapes a narrative that explains cultural phenomena in changing cities.
Atlanta Gastro Carta’s map currently lists between 180 and 190 restaurants, both open and closed. The majority are Indian restaurants, but nearly every South Asian culture is represented on the map. The exceptions are Bhutanese and Sri Lankan — there isn’t a single Bhutanese restaurant on the map, while Mithunas in Alpharetta, metro Atlanta’s lone Sri Lankan restaurant, permanently closed. Each map point reveals menu offerings, cuisine, special menus, contact information, and, if possible, the restaurant’s lifespan — and juxtaposes it with metro Atlanta’s South Asian demographics.
One of the map’s most prominent features is its depiction of South Asian population density per community. This feature illustrates that demographics aren’t necessarily indicative of where these restaurants appear. For example, there is only one Bangladeshi restaurant in Gwinnett County despite its large number of Bangladeshi residents. According to Statmetric, Gwinnett County has one of the country’s highest Bangladeshi populations at 1,858 residents.
The project also uncovered overlapping cuisines at South Asian restaurants around metro Atlanta. Many restaurants associated with smaller South Asian countries, like Nepal, offer additional regional cuisine — Indian being the most prominent example — to attract additional customers. Interestingly, the mapping project revealed there are only three Indian restaurants on Buford Highway, while Bangladeshi restaurants dominate the same area.
The map data illustrated that a number of South Asian grocery stores have started serving regional cuisine. “If you go to Cherians in Decatur, you’ll find there’s a small corner where they serve vegetarian south Indian food,” Banerjee said.
Through interviews conducted by Banerjee and his team for the Atlanta Gastro Carta project, they discovered that Bangladeshi residents prefer sourcing goat meat at Al-Amin Halal Supermarket and Restaurant in Doraville rather than at places like Buford Highway Farmers Market. International markets typically sell imported Australian goat meat, which Bangladeshi residents do not prefer, he said.
“We are finding out through our research and interviews how practices, such as vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism, perspectives (traditional or fusion), and beliefs, such as Halal and non-Halal styles, are working within population networks and institutions that affect the production, consumption, and distribution of food,” said Banerjee.
The mapping of metro Atlanta’s South Asian restaurants allowed Banerjee and the students involved in the project to investigate how some cuisines transformed over time in relation to concepts such as “authenticity” and “originality.”
“Butter chicken and kebabs are significant examples of this. We are looking at how food and cuisines are symbols of a specific culture as they display the struggle, passion, pride, and unity in a host land away from the homeland,” he added.
Currently a limited-term instructor at GSU Perimeter College, Banerjee plans to keep the project going, updating the map points and adding interviews with South Asian restaurant owners. Come August 2025, however, Banerjee’s student visa will lapse. With this current administration, he worries about the status of his vocational visa application.
“If my visa is not sponsored by any universities that I am applying for an assistant professor or lecturer position, then I don’t have much idea about who may take over as the team lead or whether or how this project might run,” Banerjee said.
But Banerjee wants to keep the Atlanta Gastro Carta project going to continue researching and educating people on the demographics of the metro area’s South Asian restaurants and cultures.
Because of Banerjee, Collins is eager to pursue another food-focused EPIC project for Atlanta at Georgia State University.
“I would love to do a project on the histories of Buford Highway that would have some similarities to Abhik’s project,” said Collins. “The corridor is in so many ways very ‘Atlanta’ but is incredibly different from the Atlanta that was there a few decades ago.”
