Yes i understand how when the British colonized India and got those exotic spices and the Indians who immigrated to the UK, opened up lots of restaurants there. But still, in my 1st trip to the UK last year, I saw more Indian dishes than Chinese. Heck, even in a Chinese restaurant, we have the option to add some curry sauce on the side. And for the fish and chip shops, you can even have curry sauce to go with the chips and fish.
Is this a culinary thing, i.e. curries are easier to cook? My friend is Indian and although the curries look easy to make, gathering the correct ingredients is very tricky. Missing one and your dish doesnt turn out well. The UK already had these exotic spices so it is easier to make the dish?
Or is it a regional thing? It is freezing in England and so hot dishes like curries are perfect? Traditional stews are kinda bland so something liquid like curry is better?
Non answer but it reminds me that Britainized Indian food is the same as Americanized Chinese food. Changed enough that its actually counts as its own unique thing which I guess is cool.
I think indian food is more popular than chinese because
- there are more indian curry places
- because we have closer ties to india
- and much more people of indian descent than of chinese
So it’s what people have more exposure to.
Also while both indian and chinese restaurants & takeaways modify the cuisine in some regard, i think indian cuisine has made more concessions to local pallette than chinese. Some things i’ve heard:
- indian curries in india don’t tend to use meat as much because loads of indians are vegan or vegetarian
- chicken tikka masala (perhaps the most popular dish) was invented by an indian in scotland specifically to satisfy the tastes of some new customers.
- further reading suggests there are more examples of this! AND that we’ve been eating curry here for 215 years
When you’ve been eating boiled chicken and wheat for 10,000 years, a curry is like a handjob for your tastebuds
Everybody loves curry
I mean you pretty much answered your own question. The UK never colonised China to anything even remotely close to the degree they colonised India. Which is also why there’s more than 4 times as many people with Indian heritage in the UK than with Chinese heritage. So there’s absolutely zero reason why there should be as many Chinese restaurants/dishes in the UK as there are Indian restaurants/dishes.
There are a lot of Chinese restaurants in Britain, though. Run by Chinese Malaysians.
Yeah the UK/Chinese relationship turned out very differently than the US/Chinese relationship, which is why OP’s own comparison is to Chinese restaurants (presumably their local “default ethnic cuisine”).
They aren’t. “Indian curries” are a British invention, where in the C17th onward a vast collection of dishes from disparate and very regionalised cuisines were conflated together by those in the Raj as “curries”.
These curries were adapted and created for British tastes, and were not eaten by the native populace. When men and later families came back to Britain from postings in the Raj they brought this new cuisine with them, and sometimes their cooks.
Commercial Anglo-Indian cuisine appears from the 1920s, and with the end of the colony and the partition came a wave of immigrants from Pakistan, who opened up more establishments.
The boom began with Bangladeshi refugees arriving in the 1970s, about the time when working classes were looking beyond fish and chips for “eating out”. Here British Indian Restaurant cuisine was formed from combining Anglo-Indian and Bangladeshi dishes. BIR is a highly modular style of cooking which allows a great degree of customisation by the customer, an economic use of ingredients, and the ability to fill almost any order within minutes.
Yeah this. I think the classic tikka masala was invented in Glasgow.
Chinese food is a hard one to compare to. Since western Chinese food is not entirely Chinese and more a Cantonese fusion that was invented in new York then exported worldwide. Its main feature being adapting local ingredients to the same base template. So it is always different depending on the region. In China it is considered a form of western fast food and not at all traditional.
Dutch Chinese food is a bizarre mix of Cantonese and Indonesian dishes. As well, we colonized Indonesia.
There was this folk singer who loved Chinese food, so when he visited china he took the menu from his home town restaurant, which had the dishes written in Chinese.
Which is a clever thing to do, in itself, but the Chinese restaurateur in China knew almost none of those dishes
Western Chinese food is not the same in the West! I’ve had Chinese food in Norway, Denmark, UK, USA, and Australia; sure, they all serve sweet & sour, but you will not find honey chicken in Norway (fuck I miss that shit from Australia!).
I suppose there are so many people with Indian roots in GB that you can actually get good Indian food there. There’s competition and enough people who know how it’s supposed to taste like. I mean, where I live in Germany we have Indian restaurants run by Indian immigrants, but they are quite often not very good.
this is very important. There is both traditional and BIR food
(British Indian Restaurant)
And enough competition that the standards are high
Where I live in Germany there’s a great Indian restaurant, but the locals don’t like it. I suppose because it doesn’t serve mango chicken 🙄
We have two in my town. One is overly greasy, the other one overly salty. I suspect neither of them employs trained cooks but rather people that originally came here as tech students. I think both have mango chicken, but you can also get that in the Chinese places and in one pizza restaurant - which, despite having an Italian name, is run by Pakistani, but still has the second best pizza in town.
We like food in general.
I think there’s some misunderstanding here though. ‘curry’ is a thing all over Asia, not just India.
I blame Red Dwarf.
I’m not British, but my love for indian food was honestly started by Lister praising it so much.
Found the Vindaloovian
The biggest minority group in UK are pakistanis. And pakistani food is also “indian curry” so is other countries/culture’s food i bet.
India of today and “indian” are kinda different concept imo. Even today’s india has a ton of different ethnic groups.
There are lots of people with Indian roots in the UK. Opening a small takeaway is one of the easiest ways to get started as an entrepreneur so that’s what many of them did. Which resulted in a lot of those places being around. So when you’re hungry, you step outside and the nearest place sells currys, that’s what you’ll get.
If you think a British stew is bland you’ve evidently never tried a joint of beef slow cooked in beer and gravy for 24 hours.
If you think stew is bland you’re clearly missing some ingredients, although it’s not the most exciting of foods.
Yeah you never heard of mash peas innit? Hav ya govnar
Each time my family got together (Birthdays, Easter, Christmas, etc) they used to get an Indian takeaway in the evening. I was only 3 or 4 at the time, so they fed me a kids meal earlier (probably in the hopes I wouldn’t pester them & go to sleep).
It always smelled awesome, and I always came down asking to try some. My grandad made the mistake of giving me chicken madras on a poppadom one night thinking I’d hate it… I’ve loved curries since. I remember my family being shocked I kept asking for more.
I’m a massive fan of saucy dishes, but an Indian seems to hit different. It’s the mix of it being a slightly thicker & creamy sauce marinated with the chicken, blended with all the spices, and a slight burning (but not painful) sensation you experience eating it.
I like Chinese takeaways too, but I’d always prefer an Indian if given the option.
Not British so grain of salt and all that. High numbers of Indian’ish population, sad weather most of the timer requiring some spice and overall weird culture in UK I presume ;)
