Landladies and Inn keepers may have offered "curried" dishes before then, but this was the first restaurant owned and operated by and an Indian, a Bengali MuslimSake Dean Mohammed, who hobnobbed with the NABOBS, returned British from India, was under the tutelage of an Irish officer of the British East India Company and married an Irish lady and settled down in London.
In the early 20th century, sailors from what was to become Bangladesh opened eating establishments in London for members of their own communities, which started becoming more commercial in the 1940s. Following a war in their home country, many Bangladeshis came to London in 1971, and the curry house industry started in earnest.
London’s first Indian restaurants after Mahomed’s short-lived effort came a century later. According to a detailed account in Peter and Colleen Grove’s Mood Food/ Menu Magazine, Salut e Hind was the first to open in Holborn in 1911, followed by The Kohinoor in Roper Street, and Curry Café in Commercial Street in the 1920s. The most successful and influential was The Shafi in Gerard Street, which opened in 1920. These were all aimed at Indian diners, but when Edward Palmer opened Veeraswamy in Piccadilly in 1926, he revolutionised London's Indian dining scene, making it fashionable for everyone to eat Indian.
Veeraswamy is an Indian restaurant in London, located at 99-101 Regent Street. It was opened in 1926 by Edward Palmer, an Anglo-Indian retired British Indian Army officer, the grandson of an English general and an Indian princess. It is the oldest surviving Indian restaurant in the United Kingdom. In its early years, Veeraswamy served Anglo-Indian cuisine, but in recent decades, based on the popularity of authentic Indian food in the UK, has served a menu of regional Indian cuisine, including dishes from Punjab, Lucknow, Kashmir, and Goa. Edward Palmer used the name E. P. Veeraswamy for his food business and the book; Veeraswamy was his grandmother's family name. Initially it was spelled Veerasawmy, it became Veeraswamy because of a printing error. from Wikipedia
It was a pleasure to walk past this resto, while strolling along
Regent Street, that elegant street leading from Piccadilly Square
When i was studying Medicine in London, Rice and Curry was a staple and enjoyed visiting the many Indian restaurants in
the city of London.
It never occurred to me that the food that was being sold as
had origins outside the sub continent.
Two geographical incidents brought this home to me: Iran and
Kerala.
I had invited an Iranian friend in Kuala Lumpur for an "Indian"
restaurant.
I even remember the name. Hyderabad, a small cozy restaurant.
My friend from Iran could recognize all the dishes. I was surprisedbut a friend of mine in KL with Moghul Princely origins explained
that Moghuls who ruled India for 500 years (think of Taj Mahal)
were Persian speaking people, whose court language and customs
including food was Persian.
So the Indian food that you get when you got to a Bangladeshi
owned resto whether in London or Brussels, is of Iranian origins
but the syncretism is the spices. the original Iranian dishes do not
have the spices which were added later on .
I had been traveling in Kerala by this time and I was feasting on
local food, which may have had some influences from the traders.
this is the food I had come to love and outside South India, they are not easy to procure but there are plenty to be had in
Malaysia, Singapore, rue chapelle in Paris and the best dosai I
have had been in a resto in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Last night, my three close friends from Palm Beach county in South Florida invited me to eat at an INDIAN restaurant in
Lake Worth.. the menu was the usual Moghul inspired dishes,
nothing from the South of that continent.
We had a wonderful time together. we sat outside and the service
was unobtrusive . a nice Malbec wet our tonsils and the dishes
arrived, cooked to compliment the wonderful conversation we
were having
Samosa, one would think it is as "Indian" as Narendra Modi? Unfortunately no, Samosa is of Persian origin, reached India through the turkic invasions from Uzbekistan and Tajikstan (Moghuls).
South Asian samosa has central Asian or middle eastern origin.[11] The samosa appeared in the Indian subcontinent, following the invasion of the Central Asian Turkic dynasties in the region.[12] A praise of the precursor of the samosa (as sanbusaj) can be found in a ninth century poem by Persian poet Ishaq al-Mawsili. Recipes are found in 10th–13th-century Arab cookery books, under the names sanbusak, sanbusaq, and sanbusaj, all deriving from the Persian word sanbosag. In Iran, the dish was popular until the 16th century, but by the 20th century, its popularity was restricted to certain provinces (such as the sambusas of Larestan).[3] Abolfazl Beyhaqi (995-1077), an Iranian historian, mentioned it in his history, Tarikh-e-beyhagi
I sent the photos to my friends in Iran and all of them could recognize the dishes.
One of the dishes is called Rogan Josh.
My iranian friends said. Rogan Joshi, roghan means oil, Joushi means hot and boiling and it means it is roasted in oil.
in the photos above, you see Lamb Rogan Josh above the Biryani which is also of Iranian origin.
From a food blog:
To prepare rogan josh, most cooks begin by browning their meat of choice – traditionally lamb or goat – in oil. The meat is then removed and a number of spices, including garlic, ginger, whole black pepper, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves, coriander and red pepper, are added to the hot oil in stages. Next, the meat is returned to the pan along with plain yogurt. The pan is then covered and cooked over low heat until the meat becomes very tender.
If you want to taste Indian food and not "Indian food", I recommend that you travel to India, after the Covid of course. In the mean time, you can enjoy, the idea of Indian food, brought to India from Iran by the Moghul emperors, improvised with local spices and exported to UK by the returning British and popularized by the Bangladeshi sailors stranded in Britain.
The best Indian cuisine, outside my dear Kerala cuisine, that i like is home cooked Awadhi cuisine of Lucknow (i have not visited the place). A good friend of mine, once prepared Awadi food at his home in Kuala Lumpur. It was just divine.
Bon Apetit
