Chess | 'Why would beef be spicy?': Dutch No. 1 Anish Giri on Indian food

On the sidelines of Chennai Grand Masters 2025, Anish Giri was asked to comment about Indian food. The Dutch Grandmaster stands in joint-fourth place in the Masters section of the tournament after seven rounds with 3.5 points in his tally.

Vincent Keymer holds the sole lead in the competition with 5.5 points. Round 8 will be played on Thursday.Speaking about his food choices and views on Indian food, Giri said, "There's international options. There is Italian food, Chinese food. Of course if you have a tomato soup, Italian tomato soup... it's not supposed to be some kind of, you know, tomato masala soup!"But what I notice always with food is that there's always something which I don't expect to be spicy is spicy.

Like, I'm okay with if, like, the Chicken Curry is spicy or Biryani is spicy. I know this. Or, like, some kind of Paneer is spicy. I understand.

"But, like, when you have a Pizza or a Burger, there's like beef, because beef is not even Indian, right? So, I think why would beef be spicy? They put the little red enemies on the food!," referring to the indicators on food menus to demarcate spicy food.It is not the first time Giri has been fed spicy food on his journey to India. "I say it's spicy but everyone tells me it is not spicy! Now I think it's a linguistic issue! Even dal in itself is spicy but you add things to it and it becomes spicy," he had said in the past on his food experiments in India.Anish Giri had a quiet draw against Arjun Erigaisi in his latest contest in the Chennai Grand Masters 2025.