It’s been a perpetual source of surprise to me that curry houses are so ‘non-specific’. Pakistan and India together make about 1.7 billion people, about a third of the planet’s population, and I’d have thought an easy way to distinguish a restaurant would be to offer something more region-specific, but it’s fairly rare.
Here in the UK, the majority of curry houses are Bangladeshi - used to be the vast majority, now it’s more like 2/3rds. We’ve a couple of ‘more specific’ chains - both Bundobust and Dishoom do Mumbai-style, and they’re both fantastic - and there’s a few places that do well with the ‘naturally vegan’ cuisines, but mostly you can go in to a restaurant and expect the usual suspects will be on the menu.
Same goes for Chinese restaurants - I don’t believe that a billion people all eat the same food, it’s too big a place for the same ingredients to be in season all the time. Why are they not more specific, more often?
It’s the stigma actually since 9/11 or the fear from it that can negatively affect their businesses including vandalism if not less attraction to their places.
It’s been a perpetual source of surprise to me that curry houses are so ‘non-specific’. Pakistan and India together make about 1.7 billion people, about a third of the planet’s population, and I’d have thought an easy way to distinguish a restaurant would be to offer something more region-specific, but it’s fairly rare.
Here in the UK, the majority of curry houses are Bangladeshi - used to be the vast majority, now it’s more like 2/3rds. We’ve a couple of ‘more specific’ chains - both Bundobust and Dishoom do Mumbai-style, and they’re both fantastic - and there’s a few places that do well with the ‘naturally vegan’ cuisines, but mostly you can go in to a restaurant and expect the usual suspects will be on the menu.
Same goes for Chinese restaurants - I don’t believe that a billion people all eat the same food, it’s too big a place for the same ingredients to be in season all the time. Why are they not more specific, more often?
It’s the stigma actually since 9/11 or the fear from it that can negatively affect their businesses including vandalism if not less attraction to their places.