Why This Dish is Killing Indian Restaurants
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- Опубліковано 5 тра 2024
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The UK is obsessed with Indian food to the point where the Chicken Tikka Masala is the countries national dish. In this video Andy travels across the UK visiting curry houses to figure out how Indian food became a staple of British dining. And why, despite their popularity, the UK is at risk of losing these restaurants.
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Faultline is produced by:
Executive Producer/Story/Reporting: Andy Burgess
Senior Producer Anjali Sharma
Production Assistant: Mack Mooney
Production Assistant: Pete Jobson
Editor: Andy Burgess
Animations: Jatin Nahata
Consultant: Claire Alexander
Special thanks to:
Aparna Gansan
Jamil Khan, The Royal Raj - www.royalrajrestaurant.co.uk
Bangla Village - bengalvillagebricklane.co.uk/
Additional Footage from Storyblocks & Archive.org
Archive Maps from David Rumsey
Music from Musicbed // fm.pxf.io/c/2423499/1347628/1...
Sources 🔗
beyondbanglatown.org.uk/
www.atlasobscura.com/places/s...
publishing.cdlib.org/ucpresse...
www.swadhinata.org.uk/wp-cont...
www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/...
www.vittlesmagazine.com/p/tik...
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...
www.visitmanchester.com/thing...
www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1...
www.buttfoods.co.uk/applicati...
Time Stamps:
0:00 The UK 's National Dish is a curry.
1:23 Paying the bills
3:05 The first Indian restaurant in the UK
3:54 The seamen from Bengal
4:43 Post WW2 Migration
5:34 Your favourite Indian restaurant isn't an Indian restaurant
7:32 The difference between Indian & Bengali food
8:22 1971 changed everything for the curry house.
9:49 What's the deal with the Chicken Tikka Masala
12:20 What do Londers think of the Chicken Tikka Masala
13:14 Why are all curry houses the same.
13:57 The peak of Indian food in the UK.
15:08 Why do I only order a Chicken Tikka Masala?
16:33 Why the curry house is dying out
18:08 The new styles of 'Indian Food' in the UK
19:38 Why the British Indian food doesn't taste like Indian food
20:00 The secret Chef menu
21:19 How curry house changed the taste of a nation
#indianfood #uk #chickentikkamasala
MyHeritage has a promotion right NOW, click our link bit.ly/Faultline_mh and use the coupon code FAULTLINE for free shipping.
How about no. .. Also, to save people time: it is chicken tikka masala. And nobody cares.
"De-industrialization bad! Mmmm, this foreign cuisine is our national dish! Diversity!"
Really? This is the alternative from your straightforward racist? Is there any version of you that acknowledge the existence of human history before the last two hundred years. There can be no other way besides your way, right?
Restaurants in britain are aimed at britons? Wow. Shocking.
Moti mahal invented butter chicken.... I guess
Which is a tandoori chicken based dish.
Why are you using the Indian government's version of the map which has India controlling Gilgit-Baltistan and literally bordering Afghanistan, which is neither true nor do any other country recognize India's territory as such?? At least come back to the real world.
Britain: colonises India
India: colonises British food
Resistance is futile.
It really gives a new twist on "getting a taste of their own medicine" in the most literal (and highly humorous) sense.
@@rustyhowe3907india give them best food, british give them death and famine, how is this taste of their own medicine ☠️
And now, Indian origian PM in UK ❤❤❤
Revange taken 😂😂😂
Thanks for this comment but I am not agreeing. I feel so sad that so many Indian Pakistani bangladeshi jamacan Middle Eastern and Chinese/far Eastern people who have made it over to the UK (always wonder why they want to, specially now) have been obliged to go into catering, not their original occupations. And then, obliged to pander to the very narrow UK tastes, the standard menus you will see from cornwall to Scotland because . . . well you can fill in the reasons for yourselves.
No it’s still Britain has colonised Indian food. They’re now claiming a very Indian Chicken Tikka Masala is a British dish. That’s colonisation.
As an American, I feel like Indian food is to the UK what Mexican food is to the US
A Mexindian restaurant would be fire. And by that I mean it would be hot af, and delicious. Tikka con carne to start with.
Indian and Asian food is very popular in the US too
Yes, and Indonesian food to the Dutch
This analogy makes sense to me. Some argue that burritos were invented in the American southwest.
I feel like Chicken Tikka Masala there is analogous to Pad Thai for American Thai restaurants.
As an Indian, I'm more amazed than offended about a new dish emerging from Indian cuisine mixing with British influence. I'd like to try chicken tikka masala myself once 🤤
Similar to Hong Kong where its cuisine are influence by both Cantonese and British style because of its colonial past.
There's also a fight going on between Birmingham and Glasgow about which one invented the Balti
It's good. I like goat curry more tho
It is usually my go to dish (I'm american) but I know that chicken makhani and some other curry is there for me to try. I might branch a bit more
>it's not overpowering
>eyes went watery in an instant, immediately grabs a bottle of water
Jamaican Food would probably be heaven for British people since most of it is a mixture of British and Indian foods
Yeah, British people love Jamaican food, it's less common in The UK compared to Indian, Bengali, Pakistani, Chinese, Thai, but still known and loved.
@@Anonymoose66GIndian food is everywhere while Jamaican food is more common in cities with Caribbean communities like London, Manchester and Birmingham
@@tomh2121 Yeah.
i eat jerk fried rice and curry goat gravy everyday on my way home from work. its definately my favorite food.
Do brits like Mexican food?
Clicked on this video thinking I'd get a lot of b-roll of drunk British lads eating Indian food, but instead I got a fantastic, insightful rabbit hole of how the homogenization of Indi- no Bengali food is harming the industry. Thank you Andy. I will purposely veer away from tikka masala and try and go for the chef menu.
A wild Hoog appears, neat!
Lol! American selling sushi doesn't make sushi American food
been binge watching hoog and fern for days, nice that you appear now.
Bengal is literally a state in India so its still Indian food. Always will be.
@@kindofanmol UK is mostly sylhet Bangladeshi .. soo there's that
There was a Gordan Ramsay episode where he went to turn around an Indian restaurant on the ropes. The first thing he realised was that there were so many versions of curry dishes, that not even their cooks and staff could tell them apart when they were asked to taste them.
I love takes like this. It's so important to realize that the restaurants in your area are shaped by the customers in that area. Family restaurants often don't have the budget for massive advertising campaigns to sway public opinion. People say that the #1 reason restaurants fail is because of location. What that really means is that the only way for new cuisines and new food to show up in your area is if people go out and support those locations, if your town only has simple crappy restaurants, it's because those are the only sort of restaurants that can be successful in your town.
The saddest part of this is that sought-after locations mean higher rents, which mean the landlord gets a bigger slice of whatever your restaurateur brings in and prices are largely dictated by this overhead. In my town, there's a lot of council-owned properties in the centre of town, and I'd honestly love them to devote a swathe of them to "pop up" restaurants that can make themselves a name before branching out into their own premises.
Places with crappy restaurants have a population that can't afford to eat out.
It's important to know that India itself has more than 100 million Bengalis, and their own cuisine is not the same as the cuisine from Sylhet. It is a lot more dessert oriented with more focus on the sauce and gravy rather than the spice mixture of the fish itself. Pilau is cooked sweet as well.
We need to stop Bangladesh from claiming the Bengali identity for themselves. People of Bangladesh are Bangladeshi, not Bengali. They do not follow Bengali culture, and follow and Arab religion.
Thanks Satyakisil9711
@@arnavranka4510in my opinion, your opinion is too extreme, but I agree with your main opinion of Bangladeshi people should not be the only people claiming the Bengali identity. I should actually try different types of bangla food someday when I have the chance :)
@@GobbiExists Read my comment again, whenever Sheikh Hasina loses in Bangladesh.
There are Sylhetis in India as well. Ever heard of Silchar? And most Tripura Bengalis are originally Sylhetis.
As a North-East Indian, I have eaten Chicken tikka masala probably once or twice in my life. That would be case for majority of Indians. I am from Assam and we eat lots fish, chicken, duck, mutton and pork dishes. Pork with ghost pepper and bamboo shoot is a delicacy here. Fish tenga(Sour fish curry), Alu pitika(smashed potatoes with mustard oil, onion and chilli), Dali bota(soaked lentil paste with chilli, black pepper, salt) Khar(alkaline dish made with papaya, water gourd etc.) are some of the best tasting dishes here. Hope foreigners get the chance to eat foods from all parts of India.
That sounds interesting. I'll have to look for an Assamese restaurant now because I'm intrigued.
as a sylheti from bangladesh, we eat smashed potatoes too (aloo borta) and fish tenga. so good !
I wish all these were available everywhere. They sound like they are really good.
Northeast Indian pork food is heavenly 😋
I love the sound of all these things I have never heard of! Even though I am UK vegetarian. If only we stopped saying 'Indian' as if it was one thing. Even in a land as small as ours, English is not the same as Welshor Scots or Irish. Even N and S English are different. We are so ignorant.
I'm not British and I don't eat meat, so I think it's pretty interesting to see the trend in the UK of always ordering the same dish and compare it to my own habits. I'm in the US. Every time I go to an Indian restaurant, I order chana masala if I'm eating there for the first time. Chana masala isn't even my favorite, but I've found that the flavor of the chana masala will tell me what to expect from the rest of the menu. I usually order something different the second time I visit.
I judge a restaurant on its tarka dal, well judge is a little harsh but usually if I enjoy that dish chances are I will enjoy other things on the menu and it is mad how one dish can be so different depending on where you get it.
@@chipsthedog1 It's unfortunate that most restaurants were started by Bangladeshis, cuz they're just a slice of what South Asian food has to offer. So many Westerners assume "this is what Indian food is".
To your latter point, no two curries are the same, even if they're called the same thing. It's hard to convey this to people unless they just visit India and experience that for themselves.
Even Gordon Ramsay didn't understand that until he did a docuseries across India.
i do the same with italian places, my first choice is always the plain and simple pizza. if they can't handle bread, tomatoes and cheese it doesn't bode well for the rest of the menu. as for indian food i always check the paneer personally.
In California they have vegetarian choices that are so good.
Yeah, I can definitely relate. I do the same with cocktails, if I ask for what I consider a basic drink, the Manhattan, and from there I can infer whether or not too continue or just order beer or something on the rocks.
This would not have been out of place on the BBC. I feel like I've watched a fair few documentaries like this on TV. Nice work!
YO SOO TRUE then made fun of on Monty..
As an Indian with significant exposure to Bengal, Bengalis and Bengali food, let me state for the record that typical British Curry House staples are a far cry to everyday bengali Food. British Curry House Food is just that - simply British - made by Bangladeshi Britons for fellow Brits. It’s a beautiful thing!
biriyani crying in the corner
It's Punjabi cuisine tbf
In the UK the food served is Punjabi but food like biryani, halim, korma, nihari, baklava, etc. is Mughali Cuisine and belongs to Bangladesh and India @@rutvikrs
Exactly, it's even called BIR food for short. (British Indian Restaurant) It is especially true when it comes to CTM.
It is indeed a beautiful thing! There's a reason it became the most popular takeaway... it awakened dormant British palettes! Thank you
Chicken tikka masala is also popular in the US now. The whole impact of Indian food in the UK is similar to Chinese and Mexican food impact on the US. Every small town and evensny villages have at least one Mexican and one Chinese restaurant.
Yeah thats accurate. I'd say in parts of Canada, especially Ottawa and Montreal, Lebanese shawarma takes the role that Indian food does in the UK
Is Jamaican food popular in U.S. and Canada?
@@harry.flashman Jamaican food Probably in parts of Canada because there are some decent size immigrant populations in some areas. In the US I would say NYC & parts of FL do have decent number of restaurants due to the Jamaican population. Outside of that, in the large cities they tend to be not popular but also not unpopular. You won't find them everywhere but people do love Jamaican Jerk Chicken and the curry goat but the restaurants have a more niche audience.
I'm in Chicago and my food app, I can find a few jamaican restaurants that deliver to me. So not anywhere near on par as Mexican/Chinese nor the next tier of Indian but EVERYONE knows Jamaican food and its easier to find then say food from every country except maybe 10-15 countries?
While Chicken Tikka Masala is pretty easy to find over here. Tech worker visas have been really good to the US in the shape of really good, and very representative food from all over India. Just go to Devon street in Chicago, but be sure to be hungry. As for me, I am more of a Ghobi Aloo kind of guy.
Like 80% of the Chinese restaurants are the same too, the food tastes the same and they have the same things and often even similar prices, it may as well be one big chain (but I still love it)
Ayo that's crazy, I randomly found my track 'back in Singapore' at 1:18 in this video. Thanks for the support on my WEI songs, Faultline!
Talking about tomatoes and chilies always adds a new dimension to food history considering they've only been available outside of the Americas for about 500 years now, imagine what kind of foods their introduction displaced a few centuries ago, in a way you could describe indian/bengali food imported to the uk as indian/bengali/"american" fusion
underrated comment
by this logic, a lot of italian food is italian/american then. Something I'm not too sure italians would like hearing :^)
Most food on the planet is fusion food tbh
@@suhridguha2560 Most culture on the planet is at least somewhat fused as well.
@@OmniversalInsect yeah true
It's like how Pad Thai, and Thai food in general, has become so popular in the US. Though the reason Pad Thai became so popular is a different story. Basically as Thai food gained steam in the US, the Thailand government took note of this. And so in the early 2000s, they launched a program that would train Thai chefs and send them abroad to open new restaurants with the aim of promoting Thailand as a destination to visit through their cuisine. As part of that campaign, the government also attempted to standardize Thai restaurants and their menus, in hopes of making dishes like Pad Thai as synonymous with Thai culture as say, the Big Mac is with McDonald’s. A surprise to no one, this tactic worked.
It's also like how fortune cookies have become synonymous with Chinese culture...despite the fact fortune cookies aren't actually Chinese in origin. They were brought to the US by Japanese immigrants! Originating in Edo-period Japan, cookies very similar to the modern fortune cookie were made called the 辻占煎餅/tsujiura senbei. They were made with miso and sesame, different than the modern ones. But like the modern ones, it had fortunes inside called tsujiura or omikuji. These cookies are still sold in Japan today. It switched to a Chinese-American staple during WWII because of Japanese internment.
oh my god its avery the cuban american
at this point you have to be a chatbot gpt
@@robmartin5448 I've seen Avery every now and then continuously since like 2019 though, highly doubt they're AI
Yeah I've seen a Video on that Thai Food Program, I live in Malaysia (which borders Thailand) and there's so many Thai Restaurants here, I'm willing to bet a good portion of them are apart of that program
@@cloroxbleach9222I keep seeing them in comments too, I doubt they are an AI
As a Pakistani, my first experience with British Indian Restaurants came in a few years ago. The first thing the owners told me was that they were actually Pakistani and put "Indian Restaurant" in the name as it's what the British had come to love and would get confused if they were offering "Pakistani food". Secondly, the palate it's developed for is so clearly different from a typical Pakistani restaurant you'd eat from in Pakistan. Way more saucy, the sauce is usually much thicker, and less spicier as well. But it works! Fantastically! I love it! So I am definitely a fan of "White People Indian Food" lmao
pakistani food is Indian food.
It is Punjabi/Mughalai cuisine. Almost all Indian restaurants in both the UK and the US serve Punjabi/Mughalai fare.
Je alous and in secure pakeee😂. You just cant handle that Brits love Indian food. No wonder, you came up with such comment. Only some pakeee restaurants call their retaurants as Indian. Brits clearly know what Indian cuisine and what Pakeee cuisine is. Indian cuisine is light years ahead of Pakeee cuisine. Brits also eat South Indian cuisine, so they know what is Indian cusine and what is Pakeee cuisine.
@@jarjarbinks3193wrong.
@@mangopudding5979 I have been to both the US and UK. Indian restaurants there mostly serve what is referred to as Punjabi and Mughalai dishes in India. Food like Chicken Tikka Masala, Butter Chicken, Paneer Butter Masala, Naan etc. In fact, that is what most native European and American customers order/prefer as well. Yes, there are restaurants that serve Dosa in the US, but they are NOT all that sought after by locals. Moreover, South Indian food like Dosas don't work well for carry-outs as they are good ONLY when eaten fresh off the griddle.
There's a 4th sector of Indian food you should consider: Traditional "Café Style". It's where the restaurant would make vats of curries and reheat them to order. The curries in these places taste homemade.
You actually showed footage of the former legendary Sweet & Spicy 9:18 which was your traditional café style Indian restaurant!
Absolutely : if you're in Manchester, there's a good selection of these, including the iconic "rice & three" places that will serve you rice and three curries for under a tenner, like This & That in the Northern Quarter.
reheated food sounds pretty mid but ok
is there a benefit of them being premade and reheated? Wouldn't it taste better if it was made fresh? Just a question tho👍.
I often make curries at home, and they taste better the next day because the flavors have more time to marinate. @@joonseokim2364
interesting!
As a French guy, I find it similar to the way "Chinese" food is seen in my country. The first "Chinese" restaurants you could find in France were in fact run by Vietnamese people (which makes sense as Vietnam was a former French colony and many Vietnamese people emigrated here). So for example one of the staples of "Chinese" restaurants in France is nem (filled with pork, chicken, shrimp or vegetables) which is a truly Vietnamese dish, close to the Chinese egg roll but not the same. They marketed their restaurants as "Chinese" even though they mostly made Vietnamese food. And then when Chinese people emigrated to France and opened Chinese restaurants they had to make nem because it's what French customers would expect to get.
As an American who has lived in India (mostly Uttarakhand) and visited the UK, I find that the chicken tikka masala I've had isn't that far removed from the standard butter chicken. Of course, no two butter chicken recipes are quite the same, but I don't find chicken tikka masala to be all that foreign to foods more traditional to the subcontinent, or at least a particular style of food there. What we get in Indian restaurants in the US and what I've experienced of South Asian food in the UK tends to gravitate towards a sort of pan-North Indian set of curry dishes, as sort of an at least somewhat Mughal-derived style (in my understanding anyway). In Uttarakhand, many restaurants of this type are operated by Punjabi Sikhs, but I can't guarantee that's the same elsewhere. Not quite what you'd get at the typical bhojnalay or dhaba or in most people's homes, but certainly something you can find pretty much all over the place. I enjoy this cuisine for what it is and chicken tikka masala as a diasporic dish, although I do long for momos, noodles, and thukpa as well as a nice, simple thali.
Never had Chicken Tikka Masala, but I think I can relate it now that you have mentioned that it is similar to butter chicken. Obviously home cooked food from North and central India is not all Curries, you don't eat so many spices everyday. Generally it is more like Thalis you get at bhojanalaya. Daal, Sabji, Phulkas and Rice with curd or Raita.
@@escalocity Same, I've never had Chicken Tikka Masala, but I do like butter chicken, and out of the Indian food I've tried I like it the best!
Even within uttrakhand we have two divisions and different dishes from both regions. People have such different pallets with change of the geography and culture around them, it's amusing.
Thats not Mu ghal derived.
Oh nice, you have been to both the UKs then. Uttarakhand and United Kingdom.
People always rely on stereotypes instead of properly understanding places, Thanks for this video explaining this
Most American towns have a "chinese takeout" that does not specify what area of china they are from. And it seems like they all get their menus from the same printing company. You have to drive to a city center to get anything "regional".
I image that's what indian food choice is like in the UK.
@@anathardayaldar Chinese food in the U.S. is an American cuisine. The items found on an American menu is unlikely to be found in any menu in the Far East. Indeed, every country with a sizeable ethnic Chinese community will have restaurants serving food unlike any found in other countries. This was my experience in the Caribbean, the UK, even India. As for the origins of Chinese food in America, it's basically Cantonese (Guangdong). The vast majority of Chinese immigrants came from there. The Chinese Exclusion Act kept more Chinese from immigrating until the 1960s. Hence, Chinese-American food was really Cantonese-American food. More recently, at least in the American northeast, there has been a strong influence of Fuzhou and very many of the restaurants are owned and/or staffed by Fujian immigrants. So, the printing company that prints out all of those menus is an American company.
Like all Brits eat eels
It might be advantageous for these restaraunts to give small samples to their customers so they can get a taste of the other items on the menu. I'm Canadian and love Indian food but have never had chicken tikka masala!
It's easy to try other dishes when your place has a lunch buffet
@@myrtlealleythat or if not try the non veg Thali which usually has the chicken Tikka masala..
I'd never be able to make my mind up. I just promise myself to come back again to try what i missed.
Really great video. The production was so tight I thought I was watching some professional network television mini-doc until I started poking around looking for more info after the video. Amazing work!
I got so obsessed with british indian restaurant food that I got a job washing their dishes just so I could learn from the chefs.
Once they realised this, they got me cooking the staff meal of chicken curry every Fri/Sat night. What a responsibility!
I learnt a lot - but they got me learning what they wanted me to, and who was I to argue.
It was hard work and low pay but they treated me like a brother. An amazingly supportive work environment. They kept encouraging me to take a break and eat more food. Legends.
Daam, you must host some dinner sometimes
Darn, take a break and eat more food, how "unamerican"(!)
@@apoorv_mc yes true, when people come over I love to cook Indian/Bangladeshi/Nepali food for them. Chicken curry on the bone is the one I do best, and is the one I cooked for the staff
@@garywheeler7039 yes it was different to most of the jobs I've had in England. It was a lot of work but I felt they actually cared about me as an employee. The fact they fed all their staff daily is testament to that also
Hard to find good labour. They try to hold on to who they get
Indian cuisine is vast. I actually urge all Brits to try out Malabar curry cuisine since that region has much longer history with non-vegetarian food (especially sea food). Also Malabar is where much of Indian spices originated and consequently where you'll find the most diverse offerings.
We need a full length docu series or books explaining the history of this food.
Kerala cuisine ftw
Malabar cuisine is a dwarf compared to Bengali cuisine(Greater Bengal). This is because of the vast Geography, long and complicated History, and sheer demographics in the region. It is the only region that touches the Himalayas on one end and touches the sea on the other end, there are old alluvial plains leading to the plateau, one of the largest fertile river basin systems of the world, the largest delta/mangrove forest, and scattered hill tracts.
It’s not “Malabar cuisine”. It’s Kerala cuisine as Malabar only encompasses the northern districts of Kerala. The cuisine from the Malabar districts are not really famous for seafood as the speciality here are other meat dishes like Thalassery Biryani. The central and southern districts of Kerala, especially Alappuzha and Kottayam, are more known for seafood curry dishes.
@@callistine8559 Fr it tastes so gooood!
I grew up in a family that owned a curry house. Thank you for putting the respect on the Bengali contribution!
As an Indian. All the information you've presented is very well researched and very true. Not only is your research great, but your style of explaining is very nice. Good job, I subbed.
I had a housemate from North India for a year, and the food she would make is so drastically different from the curry shops around me, and it really gave me an appreciation for places that have the ability to make their own authentic food.
"from which Indian city is Chicken Tikka Masala from?"
"Edinburgh"
I think it was actually invented in Glasgow.
It's an Indian dish. You get it everywhere here.
You also get 100s of other dishes, which is why it isn't considered special.
This was fantastic! I'm from the USA, and while we also love Chicken Tikka Masala, I had a few friends who introduced me to multiple types of Indian food relatively early on. I love this little bit of history into this famous/infamous dish! Kind of reminds me of Xiran Jay Zhao's defense of "Chinese American" food. It's an adaptation of humanity - it should be celebrated, but also used as a gateway for people to experience other foods and cultures.
Also American here yes we love Chicken Tikka Masala but honestly it's either Chinese Food or the Tex-Mex fusion that we love like the UK loves Indian food.
People like chicken tikka masala because it's easy to eat for someone who is not used to Indian food and it's usually somewhere between really good and ok. A lot of Indian dishes are overwhelming with the spice, powders and herbs. If you like CTM, try korma. It's a cashew cream sauce that I learned to like more than CTM.
The funny thing is, there are a lot of regional cuisines in India that are on the blander side, and don't use such an overwhelming array of spices. A lot of South Indian dishes are fairly straightforward, using just a couple spices and otherwise relying heavily on coconut, lentils or tamarind for flavor. However, there is a much higher percentage of Indian migrants from the North in the Western Hemisphere compared to the South. I would go to Indian restaurants with my non-Indian friends, and they'd ask me how "authentic" the naan, Chicken Korma and Rogan Josh is, and my answer is "I have no fucking idea, I didn't grow up on this food".
korma chicken is fkn amazingggg
Top video. I'm a British Bengali, my dad who came here in the 1960s and has spent the last 50+ years cooking up curries. Personally I've always been frustrated by how curry houses have always been referred to as "Indian," I always felt it diminishes the impact Bengalis have had on British culture and lexicon. In regards of the decline of the curry house, I felt it would have been worth mentioning both the long hours and poor pay of this work which has meant second and third generations of British Bengalis have no interest in working in the restaurant industry . I recall not seeing my dad much growing up because he was always working and we didn't have much growing up, I didn't much have in material possessions, we never went on holidays but I'm not going to say I was in poverty, we had a mortgage and I never went hungry but it was just about getting by. If this was now, then I'd be in poverty city with the stagnation of wages since 2008.
I will defend British cuisine, fish and chips are top tier, I love yorkshire puddings and beans on toast is proper struggle meal. Is it mild AF? Yes but I still enjoy it. (Though I do put curry power in bakes beans)
I mean British Bengals can be classified into British Bangladeshis and British Indians (who can trace their ancestry from West Bengal of India). Which one are you?
Yeah well Bengalis are also Indian. Bangladesh doesn’t have a monopoly over Bengali identity. You can clarify in front of the shop that you are from Bangladesh, however don’t say that Bengalis are not Indians. And no offence, but Indians did fight a whole for the sake of Bangladesh’s liberation.
Its a brilliant video. Very educational, now I know.
I also put curry powder into baked beans. Good choice.
I hate it when Bangladesis use “Indian”. Stop hiding under Indian when you dont even like Indians. 🤣 i have to avoid so many restaurants as its not Authentic Indian food.
So the Chicken Tikka style which is from the northern state of Punjab was the most popular Indian dish that was labelled as "generic Indian food" and is served by mostly Bengali restaurant owners from Bangladesh... that is a crazy south asian fusion right there... Personally my favourite Indian food dish is Pav Bhaji which is from the state of Maharashtra and has some Portuguese influence as well from the use of Pao (which means bread in Portuguese).
The Portuguese also introduced chilies and potatoes to India.
So the entire dish is "Portuguese introduced but with Indian spices"
@@savioblanc The same is true of lamb vindaloo.
@@jpdemer5 all vindaloo, which is a Portuguese dish, which went from tangy vinegary to spicy vinegary due to the introduction of Indian spices, then became spicy, more saucy when Indian chefs introduced it to the British
@@savioblancI travelled to Goa (former Portuguese colony) last year and we wanted to try some local food. We asked the waiter about Vindaloo and his exact statement was 'khatta, meetha aur spicy' (transl: sweet, sour and spicy). I was so confused, I thought he's asking me how I want my dish to taste like among them because usual Indian dishes don't combine these flavours together.
When we were served and I had my first bite, I couldn't believe it was exactly 'sweet, sour and spicy'. I didn't know it's a Portuguese dish, I thought maybe it's a coastal dish.
@@whorcruxed awesome. It's essentially a Portuguese dish, adapted to Indian tastes and in its original form, primarily made with pork
Excellent video! Well, researched, well written and well edited! Subscribed! Keep it up!
this video is just so good. absolutely amazing the production value of this video is
As a British Pakistani it’s pretty cool to see the country I was born and raised in have such love for a cuisine I grew up with. Shoutout chicken tikka masala
Irish here. Pakistanis in my town were the first people who introduced me to basmati rice, biryanis, kormas, etc.
@@pinklady7184all those dishes and things are indian by the way it's just pakistan doesn't have there own different cousine
@@shashankdixit8949 avg Indian. Always going on about how varied India is but completely blind when it comes to Pakistan
@@ea3414He is right though. Those are Indian staples. We use Basmati rice for every occasion. If you check the stores in the UK all those are imported from India. India accounts for over 70% of the world's basmati rice production. Pakistan really doesn't have any role in it.
its fine i think it is not right to separate pakistan when it comes to indian dishes, essentially pakistan and india are part of same land so to alienate them from INDIAN dishes is not so right, remember the border was created only in 47, before that it was one land for thousands of years@@shashankdixit8949
Very interesting. Here in the Netherlands we have roughly the same kind of situation with what we call "Chinese", but it's actually more like a Dutch-palate adjusted Indonesian cuisine.
The concept of a "Chin.Ind.Spec.Rest" (Chinese Indonesian Specialties Restaurant) is something that actual books have been written about.
I'm curious about what even is "Dutch-palate adjusted Indonesian cuisine". I don't even know what Dutch people like or dislike.
@@whome9842 I cant exactly explain Dutch tastes, but our "Chinese" is generally a lot less spicy, more oily, more sweet than the original.
The best food I had in my two month whirlwind tour of Europe in 1988 was the Indonesian food I had in the Netherlands. 😊
Now I wonder how those indonesian food could be labelled as chinese considering china and indonesia is very far away from each other
@@nad4243Chinese Indonesian food is its own thing inside of Indonesia, as there’s a Chinese minority population there. It bears similarity to Chinese dishes but is influenced by Indonesian ingredients and cooking styles, especially as the Chinese Indonesian population has diverged quite a lot culturally from China. Indonesian food in general has lots of different types as it’s a huge set of islands. I’m not sure how to describe Chinese Indonesian, only that it’s a little less rustic and more approachable than say Padang food, another popular Indonesian style. Chinese Indonesian dishes are among my favs as a British guy, especially their noodle soups and their versions of nasi campur (basically just a catch all for rice with assorted stuff).
Very nice episode 🎉
Thanks for all the hard work devoted ❤
I loved this video! You touched on a lot of very sensitive topics!! I love that you brought light to the wonderful Bangladeshis and their influence. I would love you to do a video about food in the UK that is Punjabi! Punjabis are a huge part of the South Asian UK population. Also if you found people willing to do so, a video about where WE eat out would be soooo great..
As a Bengali, with connections in Bangladesh, it's great to see this.
Nobody believed me when I told that the whole of UK is actually eating Bengali cuisine or derived a lot from it. I wasn't being elitist, it was an observation. Its great now that there's this well researched video.
almost none of the dishes they serve are Bengali, most dishes they serve originated in northern present day pakistan or India, they are just run by Bangladeshi bengali immigrants, and that is a fact this video was not able to get across the audience. so technically, you would be wrong
Because many popular curry house dishes like vindaloo and butter chicken are of west and north indian origin. Tikka masala too is heavily inspired by something that would be served in the punjab region. Bengali dishes are very different, and something im not sure your palette is used to
@@BruceWayne_notBatman your writing is incoherent or you're tying very hard to put me down.
"Bengali dishes are very different, and something im not sure your palette is used to" - how do you know that bro? Have you met me or my family? would you shut up if i gave you the cv of all my family members that were chefs? how the heck do you assume my palate is not used to bengali food when I've started the sentence with "As a bengali and roots in bangladesh" lol
next, i'll repeat what i said: "the whole of UK is actually eating Bengali cuisine or derived a lot from it." Note the word derived. here's what it means in this context: like every culture has their own set of spice mix, we bengalis do too. the preparations in uk reflect a very close resemblance to the spice mix that bengalis use. and bengali spice mix is very unique jsut like say south or north cultures. so its very easy to distinguish if the tikka is "adulterated" with bengali mix or mallu mix.
If you are still refusing to belive this, then maybe you need a lesson on what are considered as common in bengali spice mixes and then search for the spices used in uk for preparing punjabi dishes. OR do you want me to post the ingredients for you?
my point will always be that uk citizens consume bengali spice mix disguised as a punjabi/pakisthan dish.
and yes, this is totally happening due to the massive influx of Bangladeshis. that has nothing to do if the original dish was from punjab or wherever. if these same bangladeshis served tacos, they would still use the bengali spice mix. just like americans use their own mix for the tacos that are clearly labelled as mexican tacos.
Stop trying to attack me personally to compensate for your lack of knowledge and basic courtesy.
@@anivesh I consider it incoherent if someone says my palate is not used to some good when I've mentioned that I am born and brought up in that culture. Lol
Theres nothing called "Bengali spice mix", definitely. Certainly not same as any other belt. I used it as a colloquial term to refer to the unique herbs and spices we mix. Don't be dense. How else would I refer to the unique blend every community has? Bengalis use spices that northern people don't use, again, Punjabis don't use spices that the southern belt uses.
If you still think every state doesn't have a unique spice, let me know, I'll write it out. No problem. Hold back your assumptions before that.
And yes Bengali food is far way from this, and Bengali food is far more than this too.
Name one Bengali word in those dishes. Also Bangla food has plenty of fish which are minimal in these curry houses.
They are making Punjabi Mughlai fusion
In reality, you can copy + paste these trends (including the 'old school' 'premium' and 'new wave') and customer preferences with every single food that isn't of that country. This is how dishes evolve in reality. Tempura isn't Japanese for example. Curry was introduced to Japan by the British. Fried chicken was introduced to Korea by Americans during the Korean War and like curry houses in the UK, Korean fried chicken shops are everywhere in South Korea. This has even occurred in India with historic Indian-Chinese food with the Chinese immigration to Kolkata in the 1700s. Here in Australia, you had this timeline resulting in that 'old school' 'premium' and 'new wave', particularly with Chinese food, and in the major cities, you can get highly regional food like you pointed out with subcontinent food in the UK.
British food is the only one that isn't popular with anyone else. You will never find a chip shop outside the UK, except as a novelty or targeting British visitors.
@@alliedatheistalliance6776 I can't think of that many immigrants which are british that go to fuckin india or something lmao. These shops are opened because of immigrants. These immigrants go to western society, not the other way around.
@@alliedatheistalliance6776 you may want to visit Boston, Massachussetts, they are actually really proud of their Fish and Chips.
Yeah. Authentic Chinese food is great. Used to eat it regularly when I lived in Manchester. Now I'm living back in my hometown and nowhere around here serves it. Once you've had authentic Chinese food, eating the Anglicised version of Chinese food just feels wrong, so I tend to go for the Thai curries instead because a lot of Chinese takeaways serve them nowadays. Obviously these Thai curries aren't authentic either, but they're better than the Anglicised Chinese dishes that are jam packed full of sugar, salt and MSG.
@alliedatheistalliance6776 this is how much a dunce you really are. Japan has a whole culture around British food. They try their best and no it's not just fish and chips either. British food is hearty, beefy, potato stew type foods. Roast chicken, sausages, yorkshire pudding, gravy, dumplings. Beefs steak, cheeses, Seasonings. Stuffing. Etc etc.. we have a rich and dense cuisine and you're just ignoring all of that. Other countries do inspire from our cuisine don't pretend that somehow Britain is just shit and other countries don't like anything strictly British because that is absolutely wrong on so many levels.
Excellent video. Very informative and researched. Well Done!!
Great content Andy. It was fab meeting you at the Photography and Video Show. We talked about types of Indian foods and Sony cameras if you recall. If you're ever in the Brighton area, would love to catch up and talk photography. All the best.
As an Indian myself, I've really learnt a lot from this video, keep up the good work!
Yeah , you did learn about the East Pakistani airforce/military fiercely fought with the Pakistani airforce/military ...🤣🤣
@@thepalebluedot4171 : Spot On. Not mentioning India made it hillarious.
I’ve heard the story about the chef in Scotland before, and it does make sense to try and modify a traditional recipe to make it more palatable to a different region. I’d even say it’s essential to simplify the menu, like Chipotle does with Mexican, and to offer alternatives like boneless chicken that can be eaten with a knife and fork rather than the traditional hands. I’m Bengali-Canadian and I really enjoy all your videos, please keep it up!
As a Scot, I also love the disrespect of it as well. 'Add some ketchup, these savages love ketchup'. And he was right
Yeah, everything about it makes perfect sense... "Damn Brits want gravy on everything so that's what I'll give em" but with too much self respect to have it taste bad just feels properly organic.
Thank you for highlighting this up feeling really good ❤❤ 🇧🇩🇧🇩
I have a 'go to' dish when I try a new Chinese/Asian restaurant. It's a simple dish that you find on most menus. If the chef/cook can make this simple dish tasty, I usually want to eat there again. When I go back I start ordering my way through the menu trying most everything they make over time.
What dish is it?
What is it?
my go to is usually pork fried rice if they got it
Tip for anyone who wants to explore a Bangladeshi dish at any of these Curry Houses. Go there and ask if the Chef is from Bangladesh, if so ask him to make you a "Chicken Jhal Fry", "Chicken/Lamb Korma". The first one is spicy and the second one is sweet. These two are authentic dishses that you can find anywhere in Bangladesh. If you are into beef then order "Beef Rezalah". If you are vegan then ask for "Bhorta Bhaji".
This video is about Indian restaurants.
@@noggintube There is stigma attached to Pakistani and Bangladeshi as men from these countries are engaged with Grooming Gangs . 1000s of girls are affected by grooming gangs however police hands are tied on these cases.
@@samvishal3450 Mate, did you not watch the bloody video?
Kormas are a standard dish at any regular Indian place.
I am not surprised. 🤣 if you look at Chinese food being serve in the U.K. and over the world, There is no sweet and sour chicken, chop shey and fortune cookies. They are Chinatown’s invention. As a matter of fact, there is a story have been circulated around regarding the invention of Choy Shey. The story goes as Chinese takeaway usually close very late at night. One night as the takeaway come to a close, a few drunk people come in and demand for food. However, all the foods are gone. The chef come up with an idea to Savage whatever in the food waste bin and create a dish from there. As a matter of fact, the term Chop Shey means put whatever available to combine the food in one dish. So, I am not surprised Chicken Tikka Masala is a British invention. 🤣
True Western don't want to eat dog
@@thefutureisnowoldman7653 What a stereotype think all Chinese eats dogs? Do you know the history of dog eating culture in China and Korea?
@@chanshuwun Yes it's a very popular dish in both countries especially the south. Even today there's massive factories where you torture dogs to death.
@@thefutureisnowoldman7653 Why I am not surprised your ignorant. It is not very popular anymore. It is even illegal to eat dogs and cats from where I am from. Throughout history, there is only one type of dog are meant to be slaughtered for consumption, they were raised just like chickens and ducks. It was meant to be food. Only nowadays people just ate all kind of dogs, which is absolutely mad. My family has two dogs that was raise as pet was stolen and poisoned to be slaughtered for food.
@@chanshuwun I stand corrected. I'm sorry about your dogs
very nice video! informative script, nice shots, clean infographics, good editing!
So well done. Great job. Enjoyed the segment.
Indian food is absolutely blowing up in the USA. America's minority population embraced Indian food immediately as they share a love for spicy food. Many people from all over the continent of India brought their cuisine to the States so we have massive variety. In my town New Delhi style was the most popular, whereas Boston had many Bengali owned restaurants. In Seattle many south Indian restaurants dot the landscape.
California checking in. We cook a curry meal once every week as the whole family loves Indian food. One can find a plethora of recipes on the Internet and there are specialty stores for the occasional rare ingredient.
Yeah, and Mexican food is exploding in the UK too, it's just really really bad. Only the VERY best indian restaurants in the US are better than fine, whereas in the UK you can go to any indian restaurant anywhere in the country and get a feast.
@@thomasbloxham247 Exactly. Indian food and Mexican food as regards the UK and USA are mirror images of each other. Well established and good (though not necessarily on the level of the way it is in India itself or Mexico itself) in the UK/USA, and growing but not really very good in the other place---probably due to people seeing it online and being curious, but that not translating into having the right ingredients or skills.
Glad to hear it. Haven't been to the US for about five years now but even back then Indian food seemed to be the target of a lot of jokes and have a bit of an image problem.
Now they see what the reat of us do - India is a land of incredible flavours and cookery.
@@thomasbloxham247 I don't know if that's true. I've been to plenty of Indian restaurants in the US that were good quality, especially now that the South Asian population in the US is growing even more.
I don't really know how this video came across my home page, I'm not subscribed to you, I'm not British, and I'm not a massive fan of Indian food, but I am so thankful for the algorithm in this case. This video was so well made and informative but yet entertaining. Keep up the good work, this really was a quality video.
Although American, I adore Indian food and have indulged in it for some forty-odd years. I like chicken vindaloo, mutton kadai and mutton rogan josh, as nonveg options, and chana dal, chole bathure and aloo bharta (eggplant) as veg options. I like jeera/zeera rice and puri and lotcha porotha bread. I favor north Indian (except Rajastani where they routinely, to my taste, spoil dishes with sugar) and Pakistani especially Punjabi cuisine. In the main, I am not into South Indian, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan cuisine. Moreover, dishes like tikka chicken masala, butter chicken and (any) korma I do not order; I find them too saucy/creamy and grossly underspiced. I absolutely detest how many Indian chefs in Bahrain gratuitously add copious amounts of sugar to curries so much so that I need to warn the waiter in advance not to do so on pain of my returning the dish unpaid for. Accordingly, I tend to prefer Pakistani restaurants whose chefs, at least in Bahrain, do not exhibit a tendency and are not wont to add sugar. Routinely, I bring my own chilis to enliven dishes. While I would not bother with chicken tikka masala, not all synthetic dishes are bland and rendered anodyne for the British palate. I did sample in the UK, at the insistence of British colleagues, fal and tinderloo, which, I did enjoy. In Chicago, there was a cluster of Indian restaurants on Devon street in the far north of rhe city. In my university days, I used to order vindaloo but telling the waiter no tip unless I am writhing on the floor in agony after the meal. (Accordingly, I tipped very infrequently.)
I absolutely will not stop ordering chicken tikka masala, under any circumstances.
It's not hard to believe when they used to rule India
Except UK rules 25% of the planet and yet only Indian seems to be very popular throughout the UK. You can’t find others but just not near the same scale
@@Homer-OJ-Simpson there's a common saying, you can find an Indian in every corner of the world. which is in fact true
@@Homer-OJ-Simpson Because only reverse-colonized the UK, the other commonwealth countries weren't overpopulated enough to backflow to Britain.
@@Mr.DISRESPECT Indeed. I live in a nook/cranny where nobody lives on the outskirts of my city and they are here now.
@@I.____.....__...__ yup gonna completely anhilate the natives of British isles.
It’s very difficult for the British to get rid of three habits
1. Addiction to Chicken tikka masala
2. Buggery in public schools
3. Drinking warm beer
Just for foreigners information - the lager is served cold - the ale is served room temperature (which is never warm in the UK because its a cold island)
Who tf drinks warm beer? It tastes like piss.
@sunnyboynfs it's ale not lager and it's never actually warm. Have you lads never been to UK or Ireland?
@@leigh7507 Nope
@sunnyboynfs that's fair. If you've not been then we can't expect you to know about ale, stout, all those things. I think most of the world only knows lager in terms of beer
I really enjoyed this deep dive into British Indian food! When i lived in the uk one of the things that surprised me the most is how you could find an Indian restaurant pretty much anywhere. It was a huge contrast from Spain, where i had only seen Indian restaurants in huge cities. The food also stood out to me because it wasnt that different (contrary to Chinese, Spanish Chinese cuisine has different dishes that in England) to what i was used to. I love a good tikka masala (is really the only microwable Indian dish that you can find here in supermarkets), but my favourite is definitely chicken korma and also butter chicken!
My favourite restaurant in Leicester is Kayal, which is Keralan, and offers dishes completely different to the standard Indian (or not) restaurants in town. But I enjoy it all, it's great when cultures mix and match, and produce something new.
I loved the way the history of the countries was covered to give context to the evolution of cuisines!
This video was so good, the videography was great, the editing was phenomenal and the story telling was so on point! Keep up what your doing
Thank you! That was a respectful, interesting, and open-minded dive into something that other people quite obviously take for granted. I am from south Louisiana and many people have this warped idea that all our cuisine has to offer is HOT, HOT, HOT spices, blackened fish, and a couple of mass-market oddities that aren't that great: think canned gumbo "soup" and "Cajun spice" potato chips. NOPE. Asking the chef to prepare what they might serve to their own families and friends (e.g. for a holiday meal or birthday party) can give you a much better idea of any cuisine. I myself am hyper-sensitive (bordering on allergic) to hot peppers. No cayenne, no jalapenos, no red chili flakes, no Tabasco sauce, etc. for me. There are still many, many traditional Louisiana foods that I can enjoy. In fact, our so-called "Holy Trinity" of seasoning for Louisiana cuisine is a combination of onions, celery, and bell peppers -- no hot peppers required. Fried catfish, boiled shrimp, soft-shell crab, Crawfish Étouffée, fried cornbread balls (hush puppies), white pork and rice sausage (boudin), and desserts like bread pudding with rum sauce or treats like French Market donuts (beignets), are just a few of the many, many treats we eat around here that don't require being doused in hot peppers and burned. Come visit tome time and enjoy!
First video I can remember watching from your channel... was so good... immediate subscribe. Look forward to more 👍
As a British Sri Lankan this video speaks a lot to me, thanks for making this amazing video!
Very interesting that most “Indian” restaurants are from a specific region of Bengal/Bangladesh. Here in Canada, I find that most Indian restaurants are based on Punjabi cuisine (both India and Pakistan). Thanks for the interesting video.
The Brits resided in Bengal and made Calcutta the capital of India for hundreds of years. What can you expect 😂
@@rourib.dutt20 Cringeeeeeeee
@@SamDy99 what cringe? It's a known fact. The Britishers loved Calcutta more than anything in India. That's they constructed only our city on the lines of London as the capital of British Raj and other cities as Presidency Towns.
@@rourib.dutt20the restaurants in UK are mostly owned by the sylheti bengali people from Bangladesh not kolkata.
@@peace163 but they cook indian food, mainly North Indian, they don't cook aloo bhorta
I really love the veg samosas, gobi manchurian and chana aloo curry. As a vegetarian person, Indian Restaurants saved me so many times.
I'm not a vegetarian but indian is one of the few places I feel like I'm not compromising by getting something with out meat. I like some of the meatless dishes even more.
Love your production quality and the research.
I am someone from Sylhet, Bangladesh (The place mentioned in the video). Currently living in Germany for half a decade.
I sort of felt proud seeing the video. I have so many relatives living in the UK who own a restaurant.
Nice video, cheers!
I have spoken to the owner of Moti Mahal, and no they did not invent Chicken Tikka Masala. The restaurant is known to have invented the Tandoori Chickeken, and the Butter Chicken (which is also a tomato based dish).
Also Boti really means a piece of boneless lean meat. Even when it is cooked in a Kebab.
Chicken Tikka Masala is just Butter Chiken with leftover Chicken tikka Peppers and onions instead of just Tandoori chicken. It’s a very similar sauce,
Butter Chicken and Chicken Tikka Masala are really very similar. I'd wager most palates couldn't discern the difference if they didn't know in advance which was which.
sourabh mookherjee: he is talking about balti which he at least once pronounces bolti ... where does he talk about boti? ... about balti also his information may be wrong ... there is a place called baltistan
Tandoori chicken is just chicken cooked in a tandoor with any marinade of your choice. No one restaurant could have invented tandoori chicken bro.
@@utkarsh2746 actually there was something called the 'Afghani chicken'. Sometime in the 40s, Moti Mahal spiced it up with Indian spices and called it tandoori chicken.
That was well researched and put together. What amazed me is how the Balti Triangle had diminished to a shadow of its former self. I used to eat there all the time when I was in Brum and the no frills late night feasts were delicious. I travelled to Sri Lanka and experienced some really hot spicy food and ate sambals for breakfast. These days I live in Australia and can honestly say the curry houses are so bad that I only eat Thai and Vietnamese food these days.
Used to eat at places in the Balti Triangle years ago and they were great, tasty hot dishes with proper family naans and newspaper covering the table. Went last year and all three of my old haunts were awful sugary slop, really sad. There's a growing Vietnamese food scene here in the UK though and the food is really good, so I'm with you mate, at least you're getting your spice kick
I think Germany has a similar situation going on. Doener Kebap has become the most standard german dish to get. In german fashion it's something you can eat on a walk. The origins are clearly turkish and it is very much a turkish (certain part of turkey mind you) dish, but it's also smothered in sauce, has kraut in it, is less garlicy than something proper would be and most of all is served in a bun, so you can eat it with your hands.
Of course there are a lot of typical german foods as well, but they also tend to be somewhat regional, making the Doener (and maybe the Pizza) the most widely accepted default dish.
this channel is so underrated holy!!!! the quality and production on every video is amazing as well
Can't believe how many interviews you did and that you even filmed in whitechapel! This is the deep dive the country needs.
Personally, I do try to venture out and try new things from my local Indian takeaway, but I'll still often go back to the BIR 'classics'.
Fortunately, my local one has a really great deal where they do one poppadom and chutney, any starter, any main and any side for £12. Other places tend to have a much more restricted set of options for their deals, which also cost more. They can take a very long time to deliver, but the price and quality is unmatched.
I tend to get two of those £12 deals and that will last me at least three meals.
Great video Sir, thanks for sharing! Very well researched, informative, interesting and entertaining! I'm now hungry for a curry 😂😋😋🙂
There may be 10,000 Indian restaurants in the U.K, but 90% of them are owned/operated by non-indians. These same restaurants mostly only serve one of 2 hyper regional cuisines that do not represent indian food.
I'm from Bangladesh but whenever I go to an Indian restaurant I order chicken tikka masala with naan because we don't eat that at home😭
Here is the US, before the pandemic, we had a Indian restaurant that did a buffet for lunch every day. It was great because you could try dishes you were normally not willing to try & possibly waste your money on. Thanks to this I learned of plenty of new appetizers I like, but I still always end up ordering chicken tika masala anyways. 😂😂
Chx Tikka is big here in the US but honestly, Kadai Paneer is my favorite Indian dish. Chicken Tikka was one of my favorite starting out but now it is one of the last dishes I would eat, there are just too many other delicious options to choose from.
It would be interesting to see a restaurant experimenting with giving a choice of menus off the bat, a chefs menu with all the staff favorite dishes, a regulars menu with all the bestsellers, and an trials menu with all the dishes the chefs and cooks are testing out or which are meant to challenge the palette.
Kinda the same for Chinese restaurants as well. They usually serve dishes that would either be heavily customized or completely new creations.
Although, from very anecdotal evidence, I think people are also keen on getting proper dishes lately.
Seriously, especially those Chinese buffet places in America. It's honestly downright disgusting at times. They're a disgrace to proper Chinese cuisine
@@KhiemNguyen-ly1wz It used to be grim here in the UK too - all "Chinese" dishes were orange food colouring and sugar, and because people didn't know any better that's what they thought it all was. Now we're seeing more authentic Szechuan, Cantonese, Tibetan and Mongolian places pop up and it's opened people's eyes to how delicious the food really is.
Indian people became doctors, lawyers, or even a PM, rather than the graft of running a restaurant. Great documentary, great quality, well researched.
Chiken Tikka Masala is not Bengali food. It's Punjabi Cusine. Just because Bengalis make this dish, it doesn't make it Bengali, same as just because it's UK's National Dish it doesn't make it English.
The preapration and the way it's made, also it's taste is closer to Punjabi cusine, and that's what makes it a Punjabi dish, no matter who runs those restaurants, no matter who eats it.
It's same as Pizza being an Italian dish though most of the world eats an American Pizza
as a bengali, i agree with this. Though mostly familiar with indian side of bengali and bangladeshi cuisine, the curry flavour and preparation is distinctly rajasthani or punjabi.
That's not true.
Bengali cuisine is not only fish and curry things. We've great meat cuisines as well inherited from the turkish sultanate and mughals. Chittagong has so many beef and meat dishes distinct to this region only. Same goes for sylhet. Bangladesh is not just a fish eating nation. We have the magic of spice too.
@@peace163 Bangladeshi food is false representation of Bengali food lol. Borrowing Turkish dishes doesn't make it Bengali. Also Mughlai is a separate cuisine, not Bengali. Same region can have mutliple cuisine.
Also I'm only talking about Chicken Tikka which is Punjabi cusine, even if fets popular in Bengal region, it will still remain Punjabi, just like Momo being popular in Delhi, but it's still Nepali-Sikkim dish.
@@anshul6168 borrowing and developing in its own land are two different things. Bengali cuisine with mughlai and turkish touch. Bangladeshi cuisine=bengali cuisine.
Its literally a British dish, it may have some similarities to some food from ages ago but its uniquely popular and dominant in the UK, uses different ingredients and is eaten differently. No one cares where some aspects originated.
. Pizza is italian, no idea why you think its american. Apart from detroit style deep pan of course.
Love this. I live in Scunthorpe, where, post-war, many of those immigrants you speak of came to work in the steel industry, and also many set up 'Indian' restaurants (although I believe a lot were of Pakistani heritage; because of your video here I'd have to fact check that). We still have a good number of those restaurants here, and to be honest, you can't get a bad curry in any of them. They're all pretty great. However, I do think the one thing you missed in respect of the 'decline' you speak of is home cooking. I know back in the day, when I was in my early 30s (I'm near 60 now) and ordering Indian food for home delivery was hurting my pocket, 'cos I was hard up at the time, so I started to learn to cook these dishes at home. This was helped by an increasing number of 'celebrity' chefs focussing on 'Indian' cuisine, and I soon found it wasn't that difficult to replicate the British version of such cuisine. Notably, in the first place, using many of Patak's sauces and, even more so, their pastes. And then came TV chefs such as Anjum Anand (whose cook books I still own and revere) whose recipes tended toward a more 'authentic' idea of what real Indian food might be. And now we have the likes of Chetna Makan, following other 'Masterchef' contestants, and also amazing youtube channels where Mums and and Grand-Mums present incredible recipes for us home cooks to try out. I was never a Tikka Masala chap myself, but I have been guilty of reverting to Jalfrezi on so many occasions. Although I love any curry with fish, notably King Prawns. My home cooked faves are Keralan Chicken; various vegetable curries (Chetna again), and homemade Kormas that are not overpowered with sugar and coconut. Yeah, I do wonder how much working class folks like me, and other home cooks, put a dent in the market. It's so much fun to do too. Especially if it's your favourite kind of food. Here in Scunthorpe, the trade still looks good, but, I don't know, I'd have to ask the proprietors. That would be interesting. I rarely go to restaurants now because of aforementioned home cooking. But I am will do soon, just to try that chef's menu. I'm intrigued by that. Anyways, loved this work you did, and you got a new subscriber here. Cheers. :)
I would be working my way through the neighborhood balti’s and then working my way through the menu. Everything looks so good.
We do not have great accessibility in Minnesota, so I’m working my way through the Trader Joe’s freezer options. I used to work with some Pakistani engineers and one of them brought lamb vindaloo to a work potluck. Totally got me hooked.
This was very informative. Thanks
I'm in the US and a few years ago near where I worked had Indian Lunch buffet.... was the best idea ever since it expanded my horizon on Indian food as opposed to just ordering one thing. People probably order CTM because it's what they know. If they knew better, or didn't have to commit to however much a whole dish costs ($15, £25, or more) I'm sure some may change their meal of choice over time.
I myself am a British-Bangladeshi living in London. Both my dad and my mum (and her family) moved to the UK from Sylhet and there are so many of us Sylhetis here that back home, they informally refer to us as লন্ডনি ("lon-do-ni"). In fact, most of the Indian restaurants are owned by Sylhetis. When I go to a restaurant in East London, we never actually get Chicken Tikka Masala and always get the proper Bangladeshi food, actually, I've never had the dish now that I think about it. Anyways, thank you so much for doing a video on our people and diaspora since us "Londoni"s are often made fun of by some back home.
I feel like Chicken Tikka Masala is for people who dont like change and old people who dont like spicy i dont really know loads of young people who order that so it will probably change over the next 50 years.
You're right,@@xazarl3381@ xazarl3381. Whenever I''m in a restaurant (like today for my birthday!) I look for things I've never seen before, but I completely understand why people like familiarity. Hopefully, we will all keep supporting restaurants that provide delicious food, whatever we like to order.
Not so strange, that Brits adopted Chicken Tikka Masala as the national dish.. Pizza (Italian) and Hamburgers (German) are the two dishes associated with the US.
Speak of, I have eaten Indian food in a lot of cities and countries, and best meal I ever had was in Krakow.
I loved the Indian food in London and rarely if ever got the chicken tikka masala. I prefer dishes like lamb vindaloo and would sometimes even ask them to make it Indian hot. I do have to say, the best hot and flavorful curry was at an Indian restaurant in Hong Kong.
Also, I loved the Lebanese food on Edgeware road. And there is also a Turkish place on Old Brampton road (Bosphorus) that has the best Kebabs in London.
The UK has gone from being famous for unappetizing food to being an awesome food experience from top to bottom. It has been a while, but I would love to go back to London.
The British took chicken tikka & mixed it with makhani gravy which is generally used in multiple dishes including butter chicken and called it a new dish. Its like making shepherd's pie with some garam masala &call it an Indian dish.
I mean chillies are what makes the curries really spicy are from South America and other things like potatoes, tomatoes
@@edclarkey3054exactly, all their chillly , tomato , potatoes came from America, so can we say that Indian food are actually American and not Indian 😂. but I know indian will again try to make different narratives
Here in Canada I think the vast majority of Indian restos are Punjabi rather than Bengali. Also South Indian, Tamil, options are very popular for vegetarians. That downplays the Hakka (?) places serving that wild blend of Chinese food spiced in an Indian style. Interesting that our country has a very different option on Indian food, also never heard of chicken tikka masala until English cooking and restaurant shows were brought here.
Oops I left out the Trinidadian and Guyanese restaurants that are also Indian influenced, my personal favourite being the trini roti shops and the awesome snack , DOUBLES.
Yeah, butter chicken is clearly a better dish than tikka masala. I do think that we have more Punjab influence in Canada or at least North India.
What do you mean by different take on Indian food?
this video is so well put together.
This video exceeded my expectations and I think you make some excellent points. I do believe that people getting stuck in their culinary comfort zones is a much broader issue than for "Indian" restaurants though. Few other types of restaurants will regularly revamp the menu either, whether they be ones with an ethnic identity or just something more generic like McDonalds. And the term Bengali people does not necessarily mean Bangladeshis. Bengal isn't just Bangladesh, it's also the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. So Bengali people in India have the same food and culture as the Bangladeshis. It is just that religion is different. Bengali Indians mostly practice Hinduism.
This is what Chinese food is to the US. And American Chinese food is very much not authentic, except in big cities with huge populations of immigrants who want a taste of home. The reason that is, is the same reason why British Chinese food isn't either. Because most Americans and Brits won't eat the real deal. Chinese immigrant cooks in the West in the early 20th century weren’t on a mission to bring the authentic tastes of their own country to the US and Europe. They were out to make a living, and in the restaurant business, that means meeting people’s demands. Over time, people in the UK and US who grew up eating that food create associations with it, and it becomes what they want, when they eat Chinese food.
Yeah, growing up I hated "Chinese" food in the UK because it was really dumbed down for a Western palate. Now I'm lucky enough to go to a local Cantonese place that serves authentic food and it's amazing.
This is interesting. Many of these trends and patterns seem to be the same in many parts of Canada as well. While Indian cuisine - or what people know as Indian cuisine - is nowhere near as much a part of our culture here across Canada, it is a popular cuisine in larger cities, especially more multicultural ones like Toronto, Vancouver and Montréal. However, I have also wondered if the dishes we are typically offered are more "North Americanized" versions of Indian cuisine to better suit our palates (much like most Chinese food is here), as I often see the exact same dishes being offered in just about every Indian restaurant here as well.
As a side note: the same "old school", "new wave" and "premium" restaurant trends mirrors exactly what I see here too.
But getting back to the heart of the issue: I, too, am also guilty of ordering many of the same dishes I like almost every time. Dishes like butter chicken, channa masala, keema curry, biryani, matar paneer, tandoori fish tikka, and yes...chicken tikka masala. Other than chicken tikka masala, I'm not sure how "North Americanized" some of the other dishes I mentioned are compared to how they are served in their respective regions of India - or even if there is any authenticity to those dishes at all - but it always made me wonder.
I also see many people ordering the same common dishes here as well. It does seem people here in Canada perhaps order a bit more of a variety of dishes than chicken tikka masala, but I think if there is one dish that is Canada's equivalent to the U.K.'s love affair with chicken tikka masala, it's butter chicken. I would be willing to wager a bet that most Indian restaurants would say that is their most ordered dish by far. For good reason though. Whether authentic or not, that stuff is TASTY. lol
However, this video serves as a good reminder to diversify and try different things. To engage more with the staff, and to perhaps ask what dishes they enjoy as well. As much as we all enjoy the certain dishes we like, I think it's also a very good thing to break out of that cycle to try new things and expand our palates. Because more often than not, if you do, you'll more than likely discover a whole new spectrum of dishes you'll love that you may never have tried otherwise.
Great, well-researched video. I'd love to see more around BIR restaurants and cuisine
theres some good channels on yt. lateefs inspired is decent.
Dude your channels great. Love your work, play it all the time in the Livingroom afterwork. Great material 😏👉 Cool stuff man
Thanks, Ill make sure to order some if I ever find myself in the UK...
I completely get this. Every westerner always order sweet and sour pork/chicken in a "Chinese restaurant". It does originate from China but it tastes completely different from the original. I come from Taiwan and I don't think I've ever seen that in a restaurant here. I have seen it in a lot of Cantonese restaurants overseas but no one my family or any of my Chinese friends would order it. We always like to ask the waiter what their most popular dishes are and they always like to say sweet and sour pork except we pretend we didn't hear it and just order other stuff.
I’m a Westerner and hate sweet and sour pork lol. It’s probably the last thing I’d order on the menu.
Sweet and Sour Pork is served in restaurants in Hong Kong, or at least when I was there many moons ago. In London, I don't order it as I cook it at home using my mother's recipe. The secret is not to have too much sauce, nor should it be very sweet and sour. The taste and flavour need to be subtle. Something none of the Chinese restaurants here manages to get right.
As a kid, I loved sweet & sour spareribs. Don't think I've ordered sweet & sour anything in forty years, & rarely eat Cantonese now. Happily I live in NYC. Much more interested in Szechuan, Hunan, & Shanghaiese, preferably family-style so we can all taste kao fu or beef tendon in chili oil or cumin lamb or stir-fried kidneys without committing to a whole dish.
Taiwan has their own food atrocities too, like putting canned corn and tuna on a waffle 😂
I always go sweet and sour chicken myself so yeah, guilty lol. I'm really frugal so when I order takeout I usually always just go safe so I don't risk spending money on something I end up not liking.