Britain really takes the cake… or curry should I say?
-
As a Brit, it is still baffling to me that Britain so unapologetically claims chicken tikka masala to be its national dish. It's quite ironic really. British consumers embrace the “acceptable face of multiculturalism” through food, which reflects the limited form of tolerance that Brits have towards South Asians; they will happily eat their food (or what is considered to be their food), but the people making it are supposedly stealing their homes, jobs and preventing “real” Brits from receiving the healthcare they claim to be so very entitled to (Buettner, 144). Even more ironically though is the fact that the “Indian” restaurants/curry-houses in the UK, “between 85 and 90 percent… are owned and staffed by Bangladeshi Muslims” while “Pakistani Muslims run most others” (Buettner, 147). This highlights the “standardization” that Buettner speaks of, which “proved decisive to a food’s gaining wider acceptance beyond the migrant group”, so much so that “within Britain’s culinary landscape, curry houses took on an instantly recognizable stereotyped image” (156). This “standardization” of “Indian” food was a way of making it more palatable to white Britain, by creating a standardised menu, restaurant decor, and omitting certain key ingredients to dishes as a way of making the food cheaper and more attractive, all while losing authenticity and elements of subtlety of the original recipe.
In true British fashion, politicians will gladly celebrate the multiculturalism that they claim so accurately represents the country, as Britain’s late foreign secretary Robin Cook maintained that Britain “absorbs and adapts external influences”, while simultaneously passing laws that actively try to prevent immigration, such as Rishi Sunak’s recent racially discriminatory anti-migrant legislation. The creation of an “undifferentiated Asian population” in Britain served as to simplify and control perceptions of South Asian migrants, reducing them to a monolithic "other" that allowed British society to selectively embrace aspects of their culture while sidelining their full identities (Buettner, 148). In other words, as Buettner underscores, the separation of South Asian food, which was increasingly “accepted and celebrated”, from the migrant communities who produced it “remained closely intertwined in the white British imagination” as the “other” (155). I believe that this homogenisation allowed for white British consumers to see “Indian” restaurants as fitting within a “standardized” mould, rather than having to engage in the complex realities of the communities behind them, rendering “Indian” food more acceptable.