As most people in the UK do, I love nothing better than a good curry. British Indian Restaurant (BIR) was firmly part of British culture. I say "was" as most people have noticed BIR is sadly in decline. This man Steven Heap will explain in great detail the reasons why. Check his channel out, it is superb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFFMeH_qREE
Which leads me onto my next point, getting a decent BIR style curry these days can be tricky, depending on where you live. I think this in itself is driving more home chefs to dabble in the great unknown of BIR cooking. Please note BIR cooking is not to be confused with home style or authentic Indian cooking, which is also absolutely delicious.
I would like to talk a bit about BIR cooking, if anyone would like to share there thoughts. How did that base gravy go? Seasoned oil or not? What pans do you use? How many times did you get the rice wrong lol?
has that guy owned any indian restaurants? has he ever been to india?
where is his citation for 80% of restaurants in india and the UK are owned by Bangladeshi's? that is complete BS. anyway the video is 30 mins long and full of waffling so i stopped listening after that.
the reason for the decline is many;
all you can eat buffets. this is what the market wants. because it's cheap and all you can eat. buffets need a high turnover of seats to work so on quiet days you make huge losses. buffets have killed it. because if you don't do buffet you get phone calls all the time asking do you do a buffet. if you say no then no booking. the main market is buffets which is basically crap food. so if you cater to the masses. you end up losing the high end clientele who want a decent indian which hasn't been lying in a lukewarm waterbath for 5+ hours. because it's hard to do both correctly. your a la carte dishes suffer as you cater mainly for buffet. also when a lot of people see the prices on a la carte then see buffet for 9.99 they say we will just take the buffet. a la carte is where the real money is.
there is also another factor. 80% of kitchen staff 10 years ago and before that were all illegal. there has been a huge crackdown on this in the past 10 years. if you are caught now you get fined like 20K per illegal worker. so now you need to employ british chefs. simply none of which are willing to work for the wages so then wages had to increase. also there simply isn't enough british indian chefs to cater for all the british indian restaurants. india has 1 billion indians in it. the UK maybe like what 0.5 million if even that? of which a handful will be chefs. also it's usually 99% of the time male chefs. mainly due to how backwards india is and this progresses through into indian business's. so you can count out most females from taking up a job in the kitchen even though they will be 99% of the time doing the authentic indian cooking at home. so increase in wage bill, lack of quality chef's due to crackdown on illegals.
also the lack of authenticity. BIR is an abomination. it's disgusting and quite frankly easy to replicate by people with little cooking skills. the only part which isn't is the tandoor oven. where the naan's are made. you can easily make a tikka on a grill, bbq, etc now. however naan can only be done right with a tandoor or similar hot stone oven. if you tried proper authentic curries you would realise how much more tastier they are. people would then be willing to pay for this as it's hard to replicate. however they ruined it for themselves going for the bland BIR market with your kormas, chasni's and tikka masalas. they have all been replicated now by the likes of asda, etc.
these 3 IMO have been the biggest factors. there are others. the recession. people do more shopping online so they don't go out as much any more, whereas before they may have stopped after a shopping spree to have a meal they don't go out at all. peoples disposable income is less, etc.
to cook a proper indian needs fresh spices. not the big bags of crap you buy in shops these days. it's also a lot more than just garam masala, turmeric and chilli powder. coriander seed, jeera, mustard seeds, plus many many more. theres up to 30 different ones you could use stuff like methi, cardamom, clove, cassia bark, fenugreek, saffron, etc. my mother law makes all hers fresh from the raw ingredients. using a coffee been grinder to grind them up. it's 100 times better than the crap you get in the shops.
