Curry controversy hits Indian food in UK

Britain's centuries-old love affair with spicy Indian food has reached a new high with the 200th anniversary of London's Hindustanee Coffee House. It was opened by Patna resident Sake Dean Mohamed in 1810.

To celebrate the anniversary, makers of Cobra beer conducted a survey and found that Bromley, with one Indian restaurant for every 853 people in the London suburb, qualified as the 'curry capital' of UK.

Other Indian restaurant hot-spots included Epsom, Reading, Leicester, Cardiff and Doncaster, but Birmingham, famous for its 'balti belt', failed to make it to the top 10.
Raj Rana, owner of Birmingham restaurant Itihaas, hit out at the survey and said quality and heritage made Birmingham the undisputed curry capital.

"Curry is synonymous with Birmingham," he said adding, "Bromley is a nice, quaint, tourist town and it's a relaxing environment. But if you go back to the first Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants, they didn't settle in Bromley, they settled in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.

"The balti revolution was a western concept and it began in Birmingham," Rana said recalling that Itihaas was recognised as the best Indian restaurant in the UK in 2007 and 2008 by Cobra for its Good Curry Guide.

"If Bromley have more Indian restaurants that's great, but you can't ignore where it began, that was Birmingham," he said.

Aktar Islam, head chef at another Birmingham-based restaurant Lasan, said, "It’s not just on concentration. It's about quality. Outside of London we're a culinary hot-spot for the country. The quality in Birmingham is second to none."

The survey also found Taj Mahal was the most popular name for an Indian restaurant followed by Taste of India, Maharaja, Akash, Spice Lounge and Monsoon. Other names included Posh Spice, Urban Turban, Ace of Spice and Some Like It Hot.

From humble beginnings in London in form of 'The Hindostanee Coffee House’ on George Street, Portman Square, in 1810, Indian food industry has grown into one of UK's largest, employing over 100,000 people with a turnover of billions.

Chicken Tikka Masala is considered UK's national dish, while Britons continue to patronise the Indian food industry despite recession.

The story goes that Sake Dean Mohamet, who was born in 1759 in Patna, joined East Indian Company. He and his "best friend", Captain Godfrey Baker, came to UK in 1784 and started a new life in Ireland.

He studied English and married Jane Daly, "a pretty Irish girl of respectable parentage". Mohamet had several children and published a book titled: "The Travels of Dean Mahomet, a Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of the Honourable East India Company".

Mohamet moved to Portman Square in London where he joined the vapour bath owned by Sir Basil Cochrane and he later opened 'The Hindostanee Coffee House'.

His restaurant was aimed at Anglo-Indians and it offered Indian dishes "in the highest perfection, and allowed by the greatest epicures to be unequalled to any curries ever made in England"

The food served at his restaurant was good, but the time was wrong. Three years later Dean was declared bankrupt.

After several trysts in his fortunes, he was appointed "Shampooing Surgeon" to King George IV. He died in 1851.

Today, there are nearly 12,000 Indian restaurants in UK serving more than three million customers a year. People of Bangladeshi origin run 90 per cent of restaurants. The curry industry is worth 4.2 billion pounds.

Supermarkets sell 1.5 million packets of chicken tikka masala every year. Each year the UK eats enough pappadums to circle the world. Indian restaurants in UK use more than 200,000 tonnes of rice a year and about a million people a day in Britain eat curry.