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Reading "British curry" feels like reading "British carbonara"
by rawTruthHurts 11y ago
Reading "British curry" feels like reading "British carbonara"
- rawTruthHurts 11y agoReplying myself in order to reply to everybody: Seeing the reactions, if I give my opinion on fish'n'chips you'll want to break my legs.
- EliRivers 11y agoA well-cooked chip of a good potato, fresh from the kitchen with just the right amount of rock salt, cracked pepper and almost too-hot oil is almost a transcendental experience. But done badly they're awful.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 11y agoI don't think anyone in the UK thinks that the curries served here are much like the ones served in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh - so calling them "British curries" seems reasonable to me. My own personal definition of comfort food is a nice hot garlic chilli chicken and a Peshwari naan.
- tim333 11y agoBritish carbonara tends to be a bit different from that in Italy too.
- EliRivers 11y agoThat British curry is exported to India would certainly suggest that it's something different :) Old-school jokes about British food aside, Britain now has a fantastic food culture and the range of cuisine available in even quite small towns compares well with a large chunk of Europe. I think there's a willingness to experiment and innovate (both in terms of the providers and also the diners) that some cultures with very strong food traditions struggle with. I won't go on again about how disappointing my experiences in Naples were, but it opened my eyes to how fortunate I am in the UK.
- KineticLensman 11y agoBritish curry eater here. I have a curry cookbook that identifies the regions of Birmingham where the dish was believed to have originated. The classic Balti is widely understood to have been developed to meet the tastes of the British
- kybernetikos 11y agoI'm not quite sure what point you're making here, but on the assumption that you're challenging the idea of curry as a British dish, curry has been evolving in Britain since before the declaration of independence. Indian and colonial Indian are distinct enough cuisines that there are restaurants specializing in each, and even that doesn't do justice to the fact that some UK 'Indian' staples were invented in the UK.
- joefarish 11y agoTikka Masala was most likely invented in Britain, and is one of the most popular curry dishes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tikka_masala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tikka_masala
- dvdcxn 11y agoApparently it was invented in a flat a minutes walk from my flat. I had no idea.
- pdpi 11y agoOr american pizza? Yet there's an american pizza culture that is quite distinct from italian pizza.
- tonyedgecombe 11y agoHa, in Oxford we have a restaurant called the Oxford New York Italian, talk about confused identity.
- Avshalom 11y agoCarbonara is probably not the comparison you should be using either. The history of carbonara is "well it popped up sometime around world war 2 and had become two relatively distinct dishes by the time it had a name"
- kybernetikos 11y agoI've eaten in Italian establishments that do not carry Carbonara on their menu and become quite sniffy if you ask about it, given that it arose so recently and primarily because of food imports from the USA.