Did ancient South Asia have much in restaurant industry or not? A debate, confusion, etcetera.

One wonders.

As I've been reading up on the history of eating out in the Western world, and in parts of non-western world, I got curious: what's the history of restaurants and non-home food in South Asia? In Tibet even?

Which led me to explore a tonne of new books and resources and look at secondary and tertiary resources to figure out what it must have been like. The results are not encouraging, though I have my reasons to doubt the logic.

One school of thought goes as follows: because hindu strictures had strict rules against eating out, without knowing the source of your food and who cooked it, rules that were purity-related and caste-related than anything else, people weren't really eating out. Because a large mass of populace didn't travel, and the few travellers took their cooks or food items with them in their journey, the need for inns that also served food didn't arise, as the market was so small. While the non-brahmin travellers would have been open to eating out, the lack of a viable business environment discouraged such amenities, and therefore there were basically no restaurants. Additionally, the concept of 'temple food', where temples (and other religious institutions) offered poor people and travellers free food, in addition to palaces often doing the same, meant even if there was a need for provisioning of travel food, it was satisfied by such groups.

However in his book The encyclopera of Indian food, Achaya says in the entry for 'hotels' that there's foreign travellers recording market stalls offering various foods, and how overwhelming the smell of public-available food for purchase was. Besides, if one were to use the logic of Roman restaurants, for example, where would the rich and the famous who wanted to explore cosmpolitan culture, try new cuisines without being burdened by their retinue, or the businessmen who wanted a change of scenery do?

Were all the brahmins following the strictures to the world for all those centuries and millennia? It seems suspect. Surely there must have been a restaurant culture somewhere at some point, that was recorded by somebody?
One wonders.