SOUTH ASIAN FOOD

By 1774 the Norris Street Coffee House in Haymarket had curry on its menu.

In 1809 Sake Dean Mahomet (n Sheikh Din Muammad) opened the Hindoostanee Coffee House at No. 34 George Street close to Portman Square. In 1812 he went bankrupt. The restaurant survived until 1833.

Mahomet moved to Brighton where he opened a bathhouse. He went on to become the Official Shampooer to King George IV.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had a strong liking for curry.

The Salut-e-Hind in Holborn opened in 1911 and was probably London's first modern curry house. It would have attracted trade from the Inns of Law, where young South Asians studied to become barristers. South Asian cuisine long remained a food for South Asians who were living in Britain, old India hands, and the adventurous. In 1950 there may have been only six curry houses in the whole of the U.K..

The popularisation of South Asian food was caused by South Asians who had come to Britain to work in the textile mills, recognising that those mills were in decline and concluding that they needed alternative work opportunities. Restaurants had been established for these workers and these establishments had proved to be attractive to many Britons. Some of the mill workers identified the potential that this development had. The decline of the British textiles industry triggered the rise of the curry to heart of British cuisine.

The process by which Bangladesh became independent in 1971 was violent. As a result, there was an in-flow of Bangladeshis into Britain. Many of them found work in curry houses.

A number of dishes have been adapted to British tastes to the point where they could not be recognised in the subcontinent. An example of this is the chicken tikka massala. In South Asia it is a dry dish. In Britain, it was reworked in the early 1970s by Ali Ahmed Aslam (d.2022), a Glaswegian restauranteur, so that it had a gravy, a feature that Britons like their Indian food to have. In the 1990s gravied South Asian food was exported to India so that British tourists in the subcontinent could eat what they took to be the local cuisine rather than the unfamiliar food that actually was. It has been embraced by some members of the South Asian diaspora.

South Asian food in Britain is subject to fashions. Tandoori is a Punjabi cuisine, and was for many years the most popular style of curry, however, it has steadily been losing ground to the Balti cuisine of Kashmir. Sometimes those who cook a particular style of food are not natives of the region from which the cuisine sprang. In 2006 it was estimated that over 80% of the UK's Indian restaurants were run by Bengalis. Of these Bengalis, 95% were believed to come from Sylhet in north-eastern Bangladesh.

In 2012 a change to the immigration rules made it harder for curry restaurant owners to hire people directly from South Asia.

In 2016 it was the case that the pub chain J.D. Wetherspoon was the UK's largest vendor of curries.

In 2021 openly Bangladeshi restaurants included Amar Gaon and Gram Bangla in Brick Lane and Kolapata in Whitechapel.

Location: 34 George Street, W1U 7DP (blue, yellow)

The Bangladesh Caterers' Association

Location: 403 Harrow Road, W9 3NF

Website: http://bca1960.com (The Bangladesh Caterers Association)

Bombay Brasserie

The Taj Hotel group's management noticed British business people enjoyed the food that it served in its hotel restaurants in India. It concluded that there might be scope for establishing an upmarket Indian restaurant in London. The company opened the Bombay Brasserie on the Gloucester Road under the management of Adi Modi (1950-2011), a Bombay-born Parsee. The establishment proved to be a great success. It was followed by Chutney Mary in Chelsea.

Taj opened the Quilon restaurant in Buckingham Gate in 1999. This specialised in South Indian food.

Location: Courtfield Road, SW7 4QH (purple, yellow)

Website: www.bombayb.co.uk

The Brick Lane Curry Festival

Location: Brick Lane, E1 6RF (purple, yellow)

East African South Asian Food

East African South Asian food is lightly spiced and has elements that derive from Arab cuisine. Coconut is used in a different way from how it is employed in South India.

Gymkhana

In 2024 Gymkhana became the first South Asian restaurant in Britain to be awarded a second Michelin star.

Location: 42 Albemarle Street, W1's 4JH (purple, grey)

Website: https://gymkhanalondon.com

The Japanese Navy

Japan acquired its curry-making tradition through exposure to members of the Royal Navy. The Japanese Navy believed that it could counter the incidence of beriberi. It soon became a staple of the national diet. It tends to be based on a roux and is essentially a spiced gravy. A small amount of fruit is frequently included in order to add a sweet tang.

Madhur Jaffrey

At the start of the 1980s the British-cooked style of a curry involved beef, cooking apples, onions, and a form of curry powder.

Madhur Jaffrey's book Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (1982) was the first South Asian cookbook to reach a mass audience.

Noon Products

Gulam Kaderbhoy Noon (1936-2015) was born into a poor Bombay Muslim family that had a modest sweet-making business. He helped to make it more successful. In 1964 he visited Britain. Five years later he returned with 50 and opened Bombay Halwa, a sweet shop in Southall. The following year the business was aided by Idi Amin's expulsion of Uganda's South Asian population. Many of them settled in the West London suburb. He opened a branch in Leicester, which had become their principal place of settlement.

Noon claimed to have invented Bombay Mix, a spicy savoury nibble mix. Southall's proximity to Heathrow led him to supply airline meals. In 1985 he investigated the market for Indian ready-meals. He was unimpressed. Three years later he set up Noon Products he entered the sector, choosing not to use artificial favours or colourings. He was soon supplying supermarket chains with his products. It was claimed that he helped make chicken tikka Britain's favourite dish. The business went on to produce Chinese and Thai meals.

In 1994 Noon Products factory was destroyed by a fire. The Sainsbury's supermarket chain hired its staff temporarily while Noon struggled to have his insurers meet their obligation. Ten weeks later the business was running again with a single job having been lost. Its new factory was state-of-the-art.

Noon sold Noon Products in 1998 but bought the business back three years later. In 2005 he sold it a second time.

Once he could afford to, Noon returned to India every three months. However, he was an ardent Anglophile and when the English and Indian cricket teams played one another, he supported the former. In 2002 he was knighted. Nine years later he was made a life peer.

Location: Collett Way, Great Western Industrial Park, Southall, UB2 4SE

25 Queen Anne's Gate, SW1H 9BU. Lord Noon's London office. (blue, pink)

The Oriental Club

The Oriental Club and The Reform Club served curries. This met the demand for South Asian food among old India hands.

Location: 11 Stratford Place, W1C 1ES (purple, turquoise)

Website: www.orientalclub.org.uk

Punjab Restaurant

Punjab Restaurant was Britain's first Punjabi restaurant. It was founded in 1947.

Location: 80 Neal Street, WC2H 9PA (red, blue)

Website: www.punjab.co.uk

South Asian Pub Grub

Megha Khanna became the landlady of The Gladstone Arms in Borough in 2018. She switched its menu from traditional pub grub to South Asian fusion cuisine. In 2023 The Tamil Crown in Angel followed suit.

See Also: PUBS Food

The Veeraswamy

E.P. Veeraswamy & Company was founded by Edward Palmer, a retired Anglo-Indian army officer, to promote Indian food under the Nizam brand. In 1924 he opened an Indian restaurant as part of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park. It proved to be a great success. Therefore, in 1927 he opened Veeraswamy s.

The British tradition of drinking lager with Indian food is reputed to have started at Veeraswamy s. It had been claimed that the King of Denmark was partial to eating in the restaurant and concluded that the beer would complement the food. Therefore, each Christmas he sent the establishment a case. The Danish royal palace has no knowledge of this having been so.

In 1935 [Sir] William Steward (1901-1987) bought Veeraswamy s. In the early 1950s he launched a Veeraswamy-branded foods business. In 1967 he sold the restaurant but retained the food business.

Location: The Veeraswamy, 99-101 Regent Street, W1B 4RS (red, blue)

Website: www.veeraswamy.com

David Backhouse 2024