As frequent travelers to England will no doubt know, the English are in love with Indian cuisine. In a recent survey of the United Kingdom, Chicken Tikka Masala was revealed to be the country’s favorite dish. According to one manager interviewed by Samantha Brown on her series “Passport to Europe,” there are as many as eleven thousand Indian restaurants in London alone! All this, I suppose, made it inevitable that we would visit one during our vacation. Nevertheless, it was not our intention to visit one on our first night in London.
As we walked back to our hotel, our stomachs began to signal their hunger. As this was our first day in England, the exchange rate was very much on our minds. Accordingly, we perused the menus of many establishments, passing on all until we came to an Indian restaurant where the prices, when converted into American dollars, seemed palatable. We walked inside, and a nice gentleman welcomed us and walked us to an empty table. After handing us menus and bringing us our requested glasses of tap water, he left us to peruse their offerings.
Along with more traditional English fare such as scones, Wensleydale cheese, and Yorkshire pudding, Indian food features prominently in the English fiction we have come to love. The first British TV show we ever watched, “Good Neighbors,” featured an executive named Jerry and his domineering wife Margo. In the episode “The Pagan Rite,” Jerry returns home with his Indian take-away, as tonight is Margo’s weekly evening to rehearse with the local choral society. She notices the bag in his hand, and orders him to eat in the kitchen with the exhaust fan on full blast. She claims that the last time he ate in the living room, “the upholstery reeked of vindaloo for a week.” After she leaves, Jerry’s rebellious nature rises. He grabs a plate and utensils from the kitchen, and places them on the coffee table. Then, peeling the lid off the container, he blows on his dinner and wafts his hand away as he slowly turns to ensure that the odors of hot curry pervade the entire room. What he does not realize is that while he was in the kitchen, his neighbor Tom Good has entered and is hiding behind the sofa. When Tom spies Jerry’s little act of rebellion, he calls out in a very Margo-like voice, “Jerry!” Needless to say, Jerry’s heart nearly stops.
While references to England’s love affair with Indian food pervade their comedies and dramas, it features regularly on “Red Dwarf”, a sci-fi comedy. Its central character, Dave Lister, is a slob who loves curry and beer. His best shirt is the one with the fewest curry stains on it. Amid their adventures, he and his crew (a hologram of his dead roommate, a man who has evolved from a cat, and an android who has broken his programming) salvage abandoned spaceships in order to restock on such necessities as Indian food and beer.
In the episode “DNA,” the crew discovers an alien craft in which a machine can change the genetic makeup of anything organic. An experiment transforms Lister’s vindaloo into a rampaging curry monster. The crew hurl their best weapons at the monster to no avail. Lister finally grabs the nearest object at hand, a can of beer, and throws it. When the beast dies in spectacular fashion, he realizes, “Of course! Lager, the only thing that can kill a vindaloo!”
In our case, the beast we faced was not a curry monster, but hunger. These pangs grew increasingly strong as we ordered our food and waited. And waited. And waited! One thing I did notice was that, unlike in most American restaurants, no one here seemed in a hurry. So we sat back, discussed all we had seen today, and enjoyed our drinks.
The food, when it arrived, was presented with great ceremony. Our dishes of Chicken Curry (mild, not vindaloo) and Lamb Pasanda were placed before us, along with our rice and naan bread. We were brought a pitcher of water, as after our long walk, we were quite thirsty. Then, for the most part, we were left alone to enjoy our meal.
Both dishes were unlike anything we had ever sampled back home. The curry had more tomato content than we were used to, and the green sauce of the Lamb Pasanda was nutty and creamy. Both entrees were delicious. The only shame was that, lacking a refrigerator and microwave in our tiny hotel room, we could not take any leftovers to enjoy later. What made the evening all the more special was that the servers exhibited no urgency to “turn the tables.” As far as we could tell, the table was ours for the evening, if we wished to stay there until they closed.
After we finished our meal and they took our plates away, we waited for quite a while until, finally, we requested our check. With it came the host, who presented us with hot, damp towels. After we wiped our hands, we were brought two chocolate mints on a small plate. Then, as a final note upon which to end our evening, the host presented my wife with a long stem red rose.
As we walked London’s dark streets back to our hotel, our stomachs no longer signaling hunger but satisfaction, we realized why Jerry, Lister, and the entire United Kingdom had fallen in love with Indian cuisine. The food was so rich and flavorful! We were also struck by the deferential manner of the staff. Not only did they treat us with respect and courtesy, but it seemed as though they viewed the preparation of the dishes, and the service of the meal, as a ceremony in which they were honored to participate.
Needless to say, we resolved that when we returned home, we would make more of an effort to see how Indian restaurants in San Diego compared with tonight’s wonderful meal.
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