Queen’s land to Curry’s land

British people have taken up to the Indian food in a big way and the big cities of England including London have streets spread around the city, full of Indian restaurants. No wonder, Chicken tikka masala is the favourite British food.

This Holiday season, like others over the years has attracted a lot of British people to Indian restaurants. According to an estimate, curry houses, balti restaurants, Indian take-aways account for 2.5 billion pounds of trade today. This was not the same until few centuries ago, when a british family would not like to stay next to an Indian family because Indian food smelled nauseous. The Indian food started getting popular in the UK in 1970’s when laid off Bengali dockers started opening Indian food restaurants. Today the curry houses and Indian take-aways are being upstaged by big breweries like Whitbreads which are opening chains of 'curry pubs'. The founder of Café Rouge has taken over Bass tied houses and formed the East India Pub company. Regent Inns have opened the Pukka Bar and Curry Hall.

Most of the Indian restaurants are full of British people and other Europeans, for whom the concept of curry is alien. The common Indian enjoys their food at their home and go out to dine Italian, Chinese and Mediterranean food. Even in super markets like Marks and Spencer’s and Sainbury’s, they have and Indian section full of Pilau, Chicken tikka masala and Chicken jalferazi. Other Indian dishes may include,pickle sandwich, bhaji, samosa and pakora. Italian dishes are the most popular followed by Chinese, which still is more popular than Indian food. Middle-east food has become very popular with range of falafel and hummus.

London is today also called one of the food capitals and rightly so, as there are every kind of world food available, in this city. Food is the gift of the immigrants to the country, which are from every corners of this world. Food is what is left with the immigrants when they change their clothes and language.