what kind of curry though?!
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British love for "going for an Indian" goes beyond taste, weaving in selective multiculturalism, complex ideas of authenticity, colonial nostalgia, and layered questions of class, religion, and region.
Buettner's "boutique multiculturalism" highlights the superficiality of nationalist cultural equity projects: it’s about enjoying cultural snippets, like curry (a very loose term btw) without engaging with the culture itself. Curry is the “acceptable face of multiculturalism”—exotic yet safe, stripped of its history and people, fitting within the boundaries of whiteness.
(Also, I'm not sure if this is entirely correct, but I'm pretty sure the use of term "curry" to refer to a wide range of dishes stems from a western mishearing of the word "karahi," which translates roughly to pot.)
There’s also heat tolerance as masculinity. In the 60s and 70s, going for an Indian became a rite of passage for young white men, eager to push against their parents’ norms and with the disposable income to seek out something “different” and “spicy.”
These rebellious young men—akin to repatriated ex-colonials—seem to embrace curry nights as more than just food. Curry houses became spaces of escapism, “Oriental” settings that sometimes leaned on colonial stereotypes, echoing dynamics of subservience and exoticism, and reflecting a past steeped in myth.
The debate over "authentic" Indian food is also interesting. Many Brits claimed to know the “real deal,” a notion Madhur Jaffrey critiqued by noting that curry houses, mostly run by Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslims, were dismissed as inauthentic despite their popularity. This elitism around authenticity created a "political economy of taste," where certain foods were reserved for the refined palate while others became the cheap, mass-market experience. By the 1980s, this led to a split in the South Asian dining scene, with upscale spots like Bombay Brasserie diverging from late-night curry houses catering to those who cared more about affordability and convenience than the “real deal.”
Perhaps these curry houses created their own kind of authenticity—valued for their affordability, informality, and unique atmosphere, adding something novel to the British landscape.
Lastly, food plays a key role in diasporic history. For South Asian immigrants, cafes and restaurants initially served as community hubs, offering “home cooking” and a break from isolation. As these places became mainstream, they turned into focal points for new British identities, like Birmingham’s balti, which became part of the local culture.
But even as South Asian food integrated into British culture, public skepticism around Muslim integration remains, showing how, while the cuisine is embraced, the people behind it often remain outsiders.
Growing up, I dismissed the foods my nani and dadi would make, influenced by the spaces of whiteness I inhabited and the alien assumptions and judgements laden within them. Now that I'm older, I crave those dishes more than anything; they warm the soul and carry a sense of home that's as profound as it is elusive. Learning to cook these meals with my nani feels like a transmission of something deeper, a way of reclaiming that once-discarded connection to place and memory. In that sense, diasporic food is steeped in melancholia.
I have nothing to say for Mr. Cardamom's video, other than that it made me very, very happy.