Demise of the Curry House

"Chicken Jalfrezi, mate, and add some extra chillies! I like it 'ot!! And give us some onion bhajees and a ration of Bombay potatoes!"
The cook in the kitchen pulls some leftover chicken from the fridge, ladles two slops of garlic/ginger gravy into a frying pan, adds two slops of "medium-hot" sauce in as well, and chucks in a few slices of red or green peppers. Adds the chicken, heats it through, sprinkles it with coriander leaf and there you are. the Bombay potatoes get two slops of the "medium-hot" and are warmed through too. That's it, basically.
I grew up on "Curry House" food. Far more exciting than roast lunches or egg & chips, ham & chips, omelette & chips, or Shepherd's Pie. I don't know what I'd have done without it, to be honest.
When I moved to Venezuela in 1981, there were NO CURRY HOUSES! :hyper: :hyper: :hyper: :hyper: OMG!! What was I going to eat?
That's when I really started cooking Indian food. Bought a few authentic Indian recipe books and worked it out from there. On a trip to London in 2001, I went to a place called "Chutney Mary" in Chelsea, which boasted "authentic Indian cuisine", and had 5 chefs from 5 different regions in India to prove it. A million times better than Curry Inn, totally different flavours, each dish a gem. Then, a few years later, I went to Moti Mahal in Soho - run by the former chef to the Indian PM. Tandoori style and, again, unbelievably good. This time I went to Dishoom and to Masala Zone. There was a "hot" dish from Andra Pradesh, with paneer and a tomatoey sauce. Incredible (and incredibly hot) but totally different from a Prawn Phaal.
The article is dead right. The idea you can have a) chicken b) prawns c) lamb d) vegetables in a a) mild b) medium c)hot sauce, AND have it served from different regions by adding another ready made gravy is no longer valid. It was great 40 years ago, but now the authentic stuff is here. Balti? I think that's a Pakistani/Birmingham dish.
 
To be honest. I like both. If I want a meal out I’ll choose a good restaurant. I’ve not been in an old school gravy style curry house for 10 maybe more years now.

But the old style curry houses have turned into a kind of nursery food, a comfort food you order in from those curry houses you no longer go to on days you’re a bit hungover or are having a cosy time.

So they still have their place but now for me and my contemporaries it’s not something you’d seek out, it belongs in the bangers and mash, pizza, macaroni cheese, lasagne, fish pie, comfort food arena.

Now I think about it almost all our most popular foods make it onto the comfort food list!
 
karadekoolaid said:
Yep / some say its origin is in Baltistan, others say it's a "North Indian dish prepared in a wok-like pan called a balti, and others claim it doesn't exist in Pakistan or India, and was invented in Birmingham in 1977.
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By the early 80's it had made its way to Stoke On Trent, or more accurately Hanley. We grew up with a large Pakistani community there and my ex-step father ran a lawyers office just up the road, specialising in legal aid and family/childcare law (the irony doesn't miss me given the other threads!). They were one of the few places that we could eat as a family because they did so vegetarian balti, so I could eat with the family and they did mild baltis that my brother c/would eat.
 
rascal said:
Curries will never die in my family. Every one loves it. I make pretty authentic curries. I make my own garam masala.

Russ
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I don’t think it’s possible for curry to die, it tastes too good.

When I’m in Spain Curry and Chinese are two of the things I find myself cooking a lot because strangely they aren’t available here in any form and it’s so integral to my diet at home going without it feels like a hardship 😂
 
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