Patna, June 14: If Chinese food items are household names in India, why aren’t delicacies from Bihar and eastern India found on the streets of Shanghai and Shandong? Chief minister Nitish Kumar today stumped officials and delegates accompanying him in China with the poser and asked them to figure a way out to put litti chokha on the menu list of restaurants there.

After digging into desi delicacies offered by people of Indian origin at Shanghai, Nitish’s interaction with food processing unit officials and traders at Shandong today was more businesslike and exploratory in nature.

“It is all right that we had the food of our choice served by the people of Indian origin. But why are Shandong’s streets devoid of the mouth-watering delicacies from the eastern states of our country? If the people in our land can enjoy the food items from China, there is no reason the Chinese will not enjoy the same from our land,” Nitish told the Chinese food and beverage traders in Shandong, a major commercial centre on the eastern coast of the country.

The chief minister also put the question to O.P. Sah and S.B. Sinha, representatives from the Bihar Chamber of Commerce and Bihar Industries Association respectively, who are accompanying him on the seven-day trip to China that will last till June 18.

He specially asked Sinha, who owns the Maurya hotel in Patna, on how to popularise food from eastern India in general and Bihar in particular in China.

“Dimsum (momo), chicken chilly, Hong Kong chicken, Schezwan sauce, Manchurian, rice fried in Chinese spices — they are all very common on the streets of Calcutta, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati and other cities and towns across our country,” Nitish was believed to have told food traders in China and the Indian business representatives accompanying him.

The delegates and also the people from Indian origin tried to impress upon Nitish that Indian restaurants serving the food items from Punjab, Gujarat and even eastern Indian states such as Bengal and Bihar were quite popular in England, United States and Canada. But, they conceded, they were not as popular in China.

This, sources said, got the chief minister thinking and he wanted the experts to find out ways and means to popularise and sell their food items in the vast market that China offers.

Nitish is known for his penchant to popularise food items from Bihar across India. “I want to see a food item of Bihar in every household across India,” he has said in many of his speeches.

His trip to China, however, seems to have galvanized his ambition to make food from eastern India available in China.

Agriculture and irrigation are the other sectors in which China is believed be strong. Nitish is scheduled to visit several Chinese villages tomorrow to study the irrigation and agriculture infrastructure.