Why This Dish is Killing Indian Restaurants

the UK is obsessed with Indian food like going for a curry on a Saturday night is embedded into the fabric of British culture up and down the country there's about 10 000 Indian restaurants across the UK and most of them seem to be selling one dish more than any other you know what the number one most eaten food in England is so chicken tikka masala maybe that's hard to believe but it's the UK's national dish despite the rest of the world thinking that this is all we eat you know you're known for having horrible food this is the typical size of an Indian menu in the UK there are so many options but I don't need a menu because I will always get chicken chicken masala why I don't know I like it it tastes good don't judge me I know how many other options I'm missing out on I love Indian food but if I go to a Curry House I have my eye on one thing and I'm clearly not alone most of it just has to be the genetic Masala has to be and chicken masala Mack what are you eating for lunch microwave chicken tikka masala so I spent the past month traveling across the country speaking to chefs owners and experts to try and figure out how Indian food especially chicken tikka masala became a staple of British dining and why despite their popularity we're at risk of losing these restaurants a theme that you will see throughout this video is family and ancestral heritage which might get you wondering about your family history we recently made a video about The Disappearance of Welsh place names and in that video I said I am a quarter Welsh which I've always known because my grand app was born in Wales but I wanted to find out more about my family heritage and to figure out if I was anything more than just English and Welsh so thanks to my Heritage who are the sponsors of this video I've been able to answer that question a few weeks ago I picked up the myheritage DNA test that helps you discover your Origins and find new relatives and covers more regions than any other tests after swabbing my cheeks for two minutes I packaged up the sample and sent it off to be tested they also have this feature where you can upload old pictures of your family like this one of my Grandad and me and enhance colorize and animate it and today I received the email with my results in the few DNA results kind of nervous if I don't have any Welsh in me I'm gonna look really stupid I've got this music and everything 58.2 English Okay that was a given 35.4 Irish Scottish and Welsh that's more than a quarter I have a bit of Irish and Scottish in me too okay 3.7 Iberia and 2.7 bulk that's surprising this has told me what I want to know but I now just have so many more questions and then it also shares DNA matches oh my God there's a lot 800 Pages grandparents first cousin grandparents second cousin third cousin some bloke from New Zealand I've never been to New Zealand uh my Heritage has a promotion on right now so if you click the link in the description and use the code Faultline you will get free shipping on your order okay so now let's get back to understanding why the UK is obsessed with Indian food to understand this fully though I had to start by answering the question how did the Indian Curry House come to be this story starts here in central London over 200 years way before the Indian restaurant became what it is today this is Shake Dean Mohammed eight Indian traveler surgeon Soldier writer entrepreneur like this guy did a lot like he was a big deal in the late 1800s because in 1810 he opened London's first Indian restaurant and at times out from 1811 he described it as for the entertainment of India and gentlemen and Indian dishes to the unequaled to any curries ever made in England but sadly just over a year later Muhammad filed for bankruptcy due to little interest from the public Muhammad was the founder of the Indian restaurant in London but it was over in the East end where the present-day Curry industry would really take off lasgars who were seamen and sailors from Bengal would work on the British trade ships that would bring products from Colonial India to the UK the contracts are that they would come on a trip and they would often be offloaded and got it just left kind of abandoned in East London so they would settle and there were boarding houses that grow up to support them where they would be served food in these Dockside cafes by their fellow Sailors who used curry powder and other spices that they'd brought over from India and these cafes are really the first glimpse of the modern day Indian curry restaurant throughout the 19th and early 20th century small populations of Alaska started to settle in other port cities and formed the earliest Indian working-class communities in Britain at the state of the Midnight Hour when the world sleep India will await the life and freedom in 1947 British colonization of India was coming to an end the country was partitioned into two separate independent nations India and Pakistan the latter was divided into two geographical distinct regions West Pakistan and East Pakistan as the 1940s rolled into the 50s back in the UK the government was encouraging Commonwealth workers to immigrate to help rebuild the country after World War II many workers from East Pakistan came to the East End of London to help working in the docks and in key Industries like textiles and Furniture Manufacturing okay let's pause for a second because I can already see the comments coming in what are you trying about Pakistan you're making a video on Indian food and this is where I'm about to blow all your minds all these Indian restaurants across the country today they're not Indian restaurants and they're not Pakistani restaurants either 8 out of 10 Indian restaurants across the UK are Bangladeshi owned I know the food that we love in all these restaurants is actually Bengali food and kind of we'll get to that of it but essentially what you need to know for this story in 1971 over in East Pakistan there has been years of political and social tension in the country and the region has just declared independence and waged a Liberation war against West Pakistan the conflict resulted in the establishment of Bangladesh as an independent country this spurred Mass migration from the country in particular the division of Select which was the region that a lot of the last cars came from and a large number sought Refuge here in the UK where a number of now Bangladeshi communities had started growing this is White Chapel this is now the center of this Bangladeshi community in East London you can even see it here on the White Chapel underground like these signs are in Bengali it's really freaking cool so you've already had a large community growing here but they multiplied with the arrival of the factory workers they would be working here in the East End in these fabric factories and at the end of the day they would be served traditional South Asian food in restaurants like this [Music] and remember India India are being partitioned into three separate Nations and the food served here is Bengali that's an important thing to hold on to because the modern day Curry House is almost always referred to as an Indian restaurant but they're not not really calling it an Indian restaurant goes back to our friend Dean's restaurant in 1810 in Alaska's Dockside cafes they've been around for quite a long time and of course at that point we haven't undifferentiated India so people weren't really thinking about regions calling it Indian food or saying let's go for an Indian just kind of stuck but the difference between Indian Bengali and Pakistani food is drastically different even within let's say North India you have like every state has its like separate Cuisine which isn't like a minor difference and so is the case I think in Southern India like aparna can explain it the choice of spices the choice of garnish yeah all of that actually fundamentally changes as well and it has a lot to do with the climatic regions that you're in that is why Indian Cuisine really stands out for the way it is um and Bangladesh is more based on like fish spice and we're more meat eaters because obviously we're Muslim and I've spent time in Bangladesh I've been lucky enough to eat food in Dhaka chiragong Russia all over the country and never once can I see a chicken tikka masala I mean don't get me wrong the food was amazing but it's not the food that we have here and that's because in 1971 everything changed for these Bengali restaurants the 1970s marked the rise of de-industrialization in the country which left a load of these people who were brought over as workers unemployed at the same time he also had Bangladeshi and Pakistani refugees arriving so very quickly you saw a lot of unemployment in these communities across East London and in cities like Birmingham Bradford and Manchester and I don't quite know who but somebody clearly identified a growing appetite for exotic food amongst young people who wanted to reject the bland diet of their parents the type of food a lot of you clearly think of when you think about the UK judging from this poll that we put out so more and more restaurants opened up serving Bengali food except for it was completely different to what had come before restaurants had to change their clientele they were now focus on a white working-class demographic and they totally tailored the menu towards a British palette there was less spice there was more sweet and that was exactly what people wanted my dad he started working in loads of places India Russia also were the easiest because the Bengali Community were in India restaurants used to work in Ipswich he went Exeter he was going around everywhere in fact these Curry House is created an entire new Cuisine based off of British expectations is a prime example of that to the point that we have it in every supermarket in every Indian restaurant what is the deal with it well okay I have spent the last few hours on the internet trying to figure out the origins of the chicken tikka masala it's maybe impossible there is no definitive answer so much so that I've been wearing these blue light glasses because I've been staring at a screen for too long okay there is multiple explanations but here's what we do now chicken kicker did come from the Indian subcontinent that has been documented chicken tikka masala what we have here in the UK the dish that I love will always order it at a Curry House and occasionally put in the microwave is something different this is like the bottom of the barrel some say that it is an Indian dish that was invented in the moti Maha restaurant in Delhi or Indian restaurants watching this right now I am so sorry I get it but I'm hungry and I'm fine with it this one is slightly different as well calorie controlled I can't believe I'm putting this on my internet others state that it was made by a Bangladeshi Chef in the UK but the most prominent story is the chef in Glasgow in the Shish Mahal restaurant I will not be making cookie content anytime soon that's what we're working with oh my God I'm kind of ashamed The Story Goes that a unhappy customer returned his dish because he said that the chicken was too dry the chef who owned the restaurant Ali Ahmed Aslam took it into the back kitchen and added some tomato sauce to it and voila you have a chicken tikka masala yeah maybe it was the low calorie thing but no not good no good from the unhealthy amount of hours that I've just spent researching this on the internet what we can say is that there's a possibility that this was invented simultaneously in different parts of the world it was new and exciting but also appealed to a familiar palette and would love it so can't go wrong with it what is the most popular food in chicken tikka massage oh can I have a chicken thick Masala it's just personally not my favorite I tell people just stay away from me if you want a proper Curry but it's my best seller would you show me how many people order the chicken I could yeah I could do you have a guess um I don't know five thousand you're close about six and a half thousand in a year oh wow so that's what one restaurant owner said but I want to know what the people of London think so after filling up on our microwave chicken tikka masalas me and Mac hit the streets of East London what's the most delivered food that people order around here Indian food it is the most famous food is Indian food what your favorite Taco is I like biryani might be a curry what would you say if I told you that chicken tikka masala is the UK's national dish I'm not surprised not surprised there's an Indian takeaway in every corner I don't believe you don't believe her what I would believe that she's like everywhere you go every street corners got some little version of their Tiki Masala their Indian food it's all over this place it doesn't even taste like Curry it doesn't sound like I wanna eat it you've never had chicken tikka masala maybe one I've heard that before but me oh because I'm an instant boy I'd go straight for a bit of pie mashing liquor I mean Indian food trade in the UK is massive so at its peak which is around kind of 2010 it was worth something like over four billion pounds most of that has been actually led by Bangladeshi restaurant owners and workers so something like 80 to 85 of what we think of as Indian restaurants in the UK are actually owned and run and staffed by and the dishes I mean bearing in mind that 90 or something of the Bangladesh Community comes from one region of Bangladesh which is Select and the rest are run by pakistanis mainly from Punjab or mirror Perth is what created this distinct Curry House culture which was quickly replicated across the UK this map shows the density of Curry houses across the country today by the 80s going for a curry had just become a well-established phrase on a night out in the south of Birmingham formed the balti triangle an area of balti restaurants the name bolti comes from the metal dish in which the curry is cooked and are commonly referred to as balti houses which over time spread across the city and change the perception of Birmingham from an industrial city into an exciting and vibrant place where both restaurants have become synonymous with Birmingham other cities like Bradford were given titles like the curry capital of Britain and in Manchester wilmslow Road is nicknamed Curry mile because of the largest concentration of Asian restaurants in the UK in 2001 Curry houses across the country were firmly embedded in British culture so much so that the government's foreign secretary robbing foot gave a speech where he declared that chicken tikka masala is now a true British national dish his celebration of this Fusion dish was a huge moment the chicken tikka masala was a symbol of a successful multiculturalist country because it was an illustration of the way that Britain absorbs and adapts external influences a more hopeful more tolerant country that was embracing not only the food of South Asia but its people and culture okay so it's around this time that I'm introduced to Curry I was a very fussy child and I didn't like it I thought it was too hot turns out it's actually pretty sweet and ever since all I've really ordered is a chicken tikka masala which is fine but the problem is there is way more to South Asian Cuisine than just a chicken tikka masala I want to get to the bottom of why so many of us order the same dish and what does that mean for these restaurants foreign [Music] this is the first Indian restaurant I ever visited this is where I learned what Indian food was it's what people expect from Indian restaurants the typical problems come out Stars will come out you take your time your Mains comes out you're gonna get a lot of meat in your food you're gonna get a lot of sauce you're not going to be the size of a plate it's not gonna be cut off for you it's gonna be in a circle most of our customers are regulars I know them all by name I can tell on the phone voices certain customers I know straight away as soon as they say hi I know who it is it's really this familiarity and loyalty that allows these restaurants to retain regular customers up and down the country it's become like a pub every village has one you know exactly what you're gonna get when you're going to your neighborhood Bengali restaurant or takeoff there's just a comfort to it wherever you are and that has a lot to do with this base gravy it's at the foundation of most of these restaurants main dishes it's both the secret to the curry House's success but that familiarity is also their biggest flaw they are bound to their menu because the regular customer will usually order the same thing I knew someone's order straight away checking my dress lavender loo two garlic naans that's it and they're not going to Veer away from that because that's what they're used to having I've tried so many times when we first changed the menu over we added new dishes but people will still order the dance ACT people still order the bubble tea instead of our new dishes at the Bombay Flame in the 70s the introduction of these Fusion dishes offered a new and exciting way of dining and eating out except for it hasn't really evolved in the past 50 years plus supermarkets and pubs have flooded the market diluting the interest remember birmingham's balti triangle it was made up of 30 balti houses but because of the evolving culture and food Trends along with the rise in rent and economic pressures today only four restaurants remain so I've spent a long time trying to work out how many Curry houses there are across the UK and the figures are actually so conflicting that we can't put a number on it but according to this Guardian article most suggest that they have dropped from around 12 000 in 2011 to about 8 000 today and from those that I spoke to the biggest Factor seems to be staffing issues because there's more job opportunities people are doing taxis my dad never wanted me to be in the Russia industry he used the internet and we said no I want you guys to become a doctor yeah engineer with all this stuff and I think in about 20 years the only places that are going to study are going to be places where it's been a family restaurant and they've had kids that want to keep the rest yeah the shot rise and the mass saturation of the Curry House industry I actually created an opportunity for the market to split into free sectors the old school tried and trusted restaurants and the premium in new weight premium restaurants like its name suggests is a premium version of Indian cuisine in the UK the focus is on introducing a European fine dining experience to the cuisine whilst preserving its authentic preparation and cooking they employ ambitious Indian chefs from the various regions and serve up dishes like shakuti a curry dish from the state of Goa with many Regional spices white poppy seeds and large dried red chilies malaba Curry which is a spicy South Indian dish from Kerala and Karnataka where the coastline climate and cultural history make these fish dishes popular and chicken Kahari a very spicy dish prepared in a wok which is a staple in Pakistan and North India the other sector is New Wave unlike the old school Curry houses they don't solely rely on tried and trusted dish and unlike the premium restaurants their purpose isn't necessarily an Indian fine dining experience these restaurants focus more on casual all-day dining always trying to innovate and bring new exciting Indian dishes to the consumer and usually you can see them operating in multiple locations but the new sectors of the industry have pushed the boat out further giving the public new options that they didn't previously have and trying to redefine what British South Asian food can be so people like me don't always go for a chicken tikka masala back on Brick Lane the owner of one restaurant explained how even though people are now more adventurous and open to trying new dishes they'd never be able to replicate the spice of Bengali food from Bangladesh simply due to the fact that a lot of spices are sourced fresh from those regions which just isn't possible here due to the difference in climate and geography [Music] Fair Middle Ground Jamil has been explaining how you can ask for the chef menu which is essentially dishes that the staff would choose to eat over the angler-sized options well worries you like and then I can get the chef to make it for you I want to try krappa yeah Indian bhagati all right cool the chef's gonna make a chicken chicken masala to start with then he's gonna make a rajeshwari which is my personal favorite and then he's gonna make a job crazy about our style right there so it's not gonna be like a fresh Indian restaurant style what was the difference I was just gonna be spicier okay it's just gonna be way spicier and more dry less saucy [Music] and then this is my personal favorite the lamb rajeshwari so yeah I like spicy food but we're gonna see like how far I can really take this is great it's number four okay should we move on to the chefs Asian style gel Frosty okay so traditional Bengali food this child freezie so when we have Asian customers come in yeah like it's just all the chef puts his own twist on it here we go okay at the top that was really nice that is hot though but in like in like a nice way right it's not it's not overpowering and if you want to see the uncut version of how they prepared and cook this food for me you can head over to our patreon to see the full video along with exclusive behind the scenes breakdowns of previous episodes and you have the option to pay what you like at patreon.com Faultline this is the place that I grew up coming to so it's really cool to want to meet the chef who has been here since like 2004. it's really nice to actually meet them and see what it's like behind the scenes in these restaurants but at the same time it's really sad that like these Indian restaurants are dying out and the fact that the uh clientele I'd also probably put myself in this box are just satisfied with what they have and don't try to order anything else growing up with a Curry House always nearby and just accepting that this was part of British culture I guess led me to never really think about the history of these places or to ask about the stories behind each restaurant it's a Home Comfort that was always consistent like it is for so many people across the country but if you take yourself out of that comfort zone like when you travel somewhere new you open yourself up to new experiences ironically one of the best parts of traveling for me is experiencing local food my favorite meal in Bangladesh was a home-cooked feast by our host's mother on our last night and maybe the Indian and Bengali food that is weaved into British culture isn't that but it's something else that shouldn't be taken for granted the curry houses were Innovative businesses that created a hybrid Cuisine that was started by a group of people who took a risk to travel across the world to start new businesses in an uncertain place and these restaurants are the foundation blocks for the diverse food landscape that we see today where a group of working-class migrants managed to change the tastes of a Nation

Channel: Faultline

Views: 1,285,930

Keywords:

Id: yUAqSIwV4zU

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023