A dastarkhwān or dastarkhān is the name used across Central Asia, South Asia and the Caribbean to refer to the traditional space where food is eaten. The term may refer to the tablecloth which is spread on the ground, floor, or table and is used as a sanitary surface for food, but it is also used more broadly to refer to the entire meal setting. The Mughal Indian cookbook Dastarkhwan-e-Awadh, which details the Awadhi cuisine of Lucknow, emphasized the importance of the dastarkhwan.
Dastarkhwan is a Turkic word meaning "tablecloth". It is used in many other languages of the South-Central Asian region such as Balochi, Bengali, Urdu, Sindhi, Hindi, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Dari, Pashto and Nepali.