![]() ![]() "There are two key things that a chef arriving in a new country has to understand: one is the demographic and the taste-buds of the people, and the other is the agricultural cycle of that country," he says. Moreover, it's this careful blending of genuine Indian cooking traditions with high-quality British proteins and ingredients that defines much of today's finest Indian food.įor Kochhar, who strove for similar heights when he started working in the UK at Tamarind in 1994, and who describes his food as "British Indian", utilising seasonal British ingredients is crucial. Bhatia now describes his cooking style as "evolved Indian cuisine". That is exactly what he did: first, by creating fiercely authentic offbeat dishes specific to his homeland and later incorporating high-end British ingredients not often found in Indian cuisine, such as quail, lobster and scallops, and presenting his dishes in a slick European fashion. I didn't want to be associated with that culture, because it's not what Indian food is about I wanted to give the cuisine the respect it deserves." I couldn't understand the idea of people getting drunk on a Friday night and breaking up glassware. He adds: "I was very disappointed, and I hated the word curry. "Peppers, onions and tomatoes, which aren't used much in Indian cooking, were everywhere, and I realised that what Indian restaurants were serving the mass market was food that was adapted, but not Indian." "The first thing I noticed was that the menus seemed very classic Indian, but when you actually tried the dishes they had nothing to do with authenticity," recalls Bhatia, who now holds Michelin stars in both London and Geneva. When Vineet Bhatia - who, along with Atul Kochhar, became one of the first Indian chefs to receive a Michelin star in the UK - arrived in Britain in 1993, he was shocked by most of the so-called Indian food he found. Karunesh Khanna, head chef of the Michelin-starred Amaya in London, traces this development of sophisticated Indian dining in the UK back to the capital's earliest formal Indian restaurants, Bombay Brasserie, Chutney Mary and Veeraswamy, and describes "a massive evolution of Indian cuisine from the 1990s to what we have today". But while the merging of British and Indian culinary traditions can be traced back 400 years - to when the first merchants from the East India Company landed in Surat in 1608 - it's only relatively recently that we've seen Indian fine dining reaching such gastronomic heights. Prasad knows only too well the impact Michelin stars can have on a restaurant, having lost his in 2009, only to regain it a year later. That jump and Michelin's acceptance of Indian cuisine gave others more confidence and proved that getting a Michelin star was only a matter of time for Indian chefs at the head of their game." That set the benchmark and it's gradually increased. "The big breakthrough was in 2001, when Zaika and Tamarind both got their Michelin stars. "In the last 10 years there has been a huge transformation in the Indian restaurant sector," says Alfred Prasad, of London's Michelin-starred Tamarind restaurant. Where once was the Anglo-Indian food of the Raj - the kedgerees and mulligatawny soups, which merged British ingredients with Indian spices - and then the homogenous neon sauces of our curry houses, dumbed down for the mass British palate, we now have light, modern, sophisticated dishes that pay homage to Indian culinary tradition while using superior produce and modern cooking techniques. Given the UK's rich and complex history with the subcontinent and its food, it's perhaps only natural that we should now be the forerunners when it comes to Indian fine dining, boasting a wealth of refined Indian cuisine presided over by five Michelin-starred chefs (see panels). We ask their ground-breaking chefs how the cuisine came from corner curry house to being a frontrunner in fine dining. Indian fine dining in the UK has come a long way, with Britain now boasting five Michelin-starred Indian Restaurants. ![]()
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