Rationing of rice hits Britain’s Chinese and curry restaurants

Rice is being rationed in Britain as shopkeepers limit supplies to their customers to prevent hoarding. Restrictions on sales in Asian neighbourhoods are reported as emergency measures are taken by governments worldwide to combat the soaring cost of rice and prevent outbreaks of food rioting.

Tilda, the biggest importer of basmati rice, said that its buyers had resorted to restricting their customers to two bags per person.

“It is happening in the cash and carries,” said Jona-than Calland, of Tilda.

“It’s to stop people from hoarding. I heard from our salesforce that one lady went into a cash and carry and tried to buy eight 20kg bags.”

According to Mr Calland, the retailers, who sell to the curry and Chinese restaurant trade as well as to families, are rationing their customers to two to four bags during the current fear over rice shortages.

Us retailers are also rationing rice, including Sam’s Club, the warehouse club operator that is part of Wal-Mart.

Source : Times Online

How curry made us crazy for coriander

Once we wouldn't have known what it was, let alone what to do with it.

Now we scatter it on curries, bake it in breads and simmer it in soups.

Coriander is the undisputed king of the kitchen as the best-selling herb in Britain.

Spice of life: Eating more curry has propelled coriander to the top of the herb list

The plant, only available in supermarkets for a mere 20 years, now accounts for 25 per cent of all fresh herb sales.

Basil comes in second with 19 per cent. This is followed by old favourite parsley, both flat-leaved and curly varieties.

The country's top ten herb chart was compiled by Fresh Herbs, an organisation representing British herb growers.

"The popularity of coriander is being driven by our love of curry and Asian food," said a spokesman.

"People have developed a taste for spicy aromatic dishes and are experimenting now more than ever with different fresh herb varieties."

Herb sales are said to be up 14 per cent on last year.

The British love of coriander stems from its taste rather than ease of growing.

A less robust herb, it doesn't seem to thrive in a pot on a windowsill as basil or sage do.

It has been cultivated as a commercial crop in Britain and Scotland since the 1970s.

It was supplied to supermarkets in pots and packets from the mid 1990s.

The coriander used in most British curries is a sweet, aromatic Corsican type originally from Syria.

Source : Daily Mail

Battle to 'save great British curry'

Thousands of protesters in London's Trafalgar Square insisted they were on a mission - to save the great British curry.

There was noise, colour and a warm welcome to any curious onlookers who stopped by.

These protesters, more than most, appreciated the importance of getting the Front of House right.

They were here to complain about immigration rules which, they say, are harming the UK's ethnic restaurants.

And, via a direct appeal to the British love of tikka masala and chow mein, their message was straightforward.

"Stop politics," read the placards. "Save currynomics."

'Britain's culture'

One protester who has seen the status of ethnic dishes transformed from exotic oddities to a staple of the UK diet is Mohammed Ohid Uddi, 43, who came arrived from Bangladesh in 1976.

He now runs the Spicy World restaurant in London's Victoria, and insisted that it is the government's patriotic duty to support the curry industry.

Restaurants like mine make a huge contribution to the British economy Shofiqul Islam

"Curry isn't Indian or Bangladeshi food anymore," he says. "It's British food now.

"It's part of Britain's culture, and we need everyone's support to preserve it."

The demonstrators - under the banner of the Ethnic Catering Alliance - say a new points-based system for non-EU immigrants has led to a severe shortage of kitchen staff.

Under the scheme, migrants can only work in the UK if they meet criteria including the ability to speak proficient English.

"It's crazy," said Salim Chowdhury Miah, a restaurateur and local councillor from Derby. "My chef can't speak any English, but he doesn't need to. He's there to make curry.

"Second and third generation immigrants don't want to work in kitchens, so the only staff who know the recipes come from overseas. But now we're being penalised."

Shofiqul Islam, 29, from Chester, agrees. Demand is booming, but he can only keep his restaurant going by drafting in his wife and brother to help out.

"The government say you should recruit European people or British people," he says.

"I've tried that. It didn't work. They don't want to do it.

"Restaurants like mine make a huge contribution to the British economy, and people want to come and eat in them. Why can't the government let us give them what they want?"

'Didn't listen'

Although most of the protesters had their roots in the subcontinent, other communities were represented too.

Vanessa Fong said she was struggling to recruit kitchen staff

Vanessa Fong, 44, runs a Chinese takeaway in Watford, Herts.

"It's very, very difficult for me to recruit kitchen staff," she said.

"Normally, I would get people in from China or Malaysia.

"But the rules make that very difficult, and people from this country don't want to do that kind of work."

And among the crowd were warnings for the government to take notice, or pay the price at the ballot box.

Abu Taher, 42, who runs the T and K Balti House in Leicester, said ministers should not take his community for granted.

"The ethnic minority vote has traditionally been with the Labour party, but if they don't take notice of our concerns then our votes will go elsewhere," he warned.

"They didn't listen over the Iraq war, and look what's happened to them. I hope they pay attention now."

Source : BBC News

Jalfrezi - Bramhall

T 0161 439 9494
A 3 The Bramhall Centre, Ack Lane East, Bramhall, Stockport, SK7 1AW

Visit arranged by: Chris Marchbank Smith
Review by: Martin Noble

The April monthly curry was held at the Jalfrezi Indian Food bar in Bramhall, Stockport.

Six members of the Council promptly reported for duty at the pub next door, the Orange Tree, for a swift half before entering the aptly named Jalfrezi.

Woodman missed this months curry due to babysitting problems and Hague was "on call". Hague's attendance was yet again a hot item of discussion. His curry attendance statistics, from the last 16 events, read an absymal 6! His 38% attendance rate may be analysed for patterns (distance from house, curry cost, dicky tummy, etc). Hague has quickly become the Derby County of the Curry Council and may soon be set for relegation !

Upon entering this modern establishment , it was clear that we were not in a traditional Indian restaurant. The venue offered a chic, low-key but tasteful interior.With an expanse of dark wooden tables, a tasteful modern bar with subtle green panelled lighting, the interior is a world away from the "traditional curry house".

The evening started well as the Council were seated at a large wooden table (“table cloth” free, which may help the more messy curry eater) in the corner of the restaurant.

The waiters promptly took our drinks order. Cobra lager, the perfect curry accompaniment and whistle wetter, was ordered all round. Poppodums were then served whilst we perused the vast menu on offer.

The motto of the Jalfrezi restaurant is borne out by the words on the front of their menu, "The essence of good food is time”. First impressions were very good and the Council hoped that the food would live up to our expectations.

The poppodums came accompanied with a massive selection of five, yes five, condiments. These were of a high standard and included a pesto-style mint sauce, creamy coleslaw, along with a yoghurt sauce, the more traditional mango chutney and red onion.

A variety of starters were sampled by the group including the Rongpuri chilli chicken (highly recommended by Jordan) and the Chicken Chat Puri (of a mammoth portion size, pictured to the right). Four members of the party sampled the 'Mixed Starter for two' and the 'Flaming Mixture for two'.

The mixed starter's arrived sizzling away on large platter (pictured left) and contained plenty of meat, much to the plaudits of the commited carnivores in the group.

The waiters were attentive, constantly replacing cutlery and napkins in between the courses.

The main courses sampled included the Chicken Tikka Silsila (priced at £8.95). This is a more fiery dish which still lets you taste the subtleties of the sauce and the strips of chicken.

Dave Marchbank-Smith gained kudos points for both attending whilst his wife was close to labour and moving up the chilli factor by eating a fiery Chicken Tikka Madras. Paul Day opted for the lamb balti dish (priced at £7.50). All main courses were enjoyed and came in good portions sizes that managed to satisfy our large appetites.

The bill came in at £23 per head (including a 10% tip). This included 2 pops each, starter, main course, rice, naam bread and 2 pints of Cobra lager (for the majority).

The Curry Council left the Jalfrezi Indian Food Bar very impressed with the high quality of food on offer. The service from the start was exemplary.

The Jalfrezi Indian Food Bar will soon be opening another sister restaurant, the Purple Pakora, in the nearby village of Poynton.

Food 9/10
Service 9/10
Atmosphere 8/5
Value for money 7/5
Originality 8/10

Overall 8.2/10

Would you Tikka a chance on this franchise ?

When it comes to restaurant chains, diners usually know what to expect from the hamburgers or coffee in places like McDonalds or Costa.

But with Indian food, would one want the masala or korma to taste the same everywhere?

One group is hoping so, as it aims to be the first chain of Indian restaurants with franchises all over Britain.

The British high street is teeming with franchises. Italian, Mexican, American or Chinese – whatever the flavour, there is a chain of restaurants to meet the demand. But no-one has opened up a nationwide chain of Indian franchises yet.

The question is: will the British palate have a taste for it?

Recipe for disaster

Tiffinbites hopes to create 50 potential franchises throughout Britain by the end of 2009.

For a fee of £150,000 (US$300,000) plus a share of profits, franchisees get prepared food from a central kitchen which they reheat or 'regenerate' (in PR speak) locally.

They also get full marketing and training support as part of the package. One of the Tiffinbites directors, Arjun Varma, wants the south Asian food sector to modernise.

"We are aiming for the young entrepreneurs who want to get into the Indian food industry," says Arjun.

"Rather than taking on a family-run scenario, they can have a professionally-backed franchise, which they would then build into two or three restaurants depending on their appetite."

But marketing and branding experts are not so sure that avoiding the traditional route for Indian cuisine might prove to be a recipe for disaster.

"One of the downsides is that most Indian restaurants are family-run businesses, offering very authentic home recipes from the menus. One of the things you lose in a franchise is that sense," according to John Holton from Fig Tree Network.

"It becomes slightly impersonal and by the very nature that it's scaled up to lots of different outlets, you lose a lot of originality."

The concept of franchising Indian food is not the first big national venture for the company which owns Tiffinbites – the Gourmet Restaurant Group. It already supplies 350 companies – including Barclays, Virgin and HSBC.

Set up five years ago by a former lingerie buyer at Marks and Spencer, Jamal Hirani, the group now has a number of spicy fingers in a variety of Indian samosas.

Its central kitchen in north London prepares South Asian food on a wholesale basis for a number of restaurants - including one at Selfridges - as well as airlines including KLM and Malaysian.

New rules

The Indian food sector has come a long way from the 1960s and 70s, when the first wave of South Asian immigrants arrived in Britain offering what was then a new type of dining at affordable prices.

But the Home Office's recent clampdown on all non-EU immigration is taking its toll on the ethnic food sector.

The new points-based system which came into force at the end of February is making it much tougher for Indian restaurants to get the qualified chefs they need.

Under the new rules, chefs need to speak English and have some third level education if they are to work and live in the UK.

The Ethnic Catering Alliance, which is organising a protest march in London, is calling for exemptions to be made for specialist workers such as Indian chefs

Ironically, the new get-tough immigration policy might prove a boon for the Tiffinbites franchising business.

Source : BBC News

£13,200 fine for curry house

The owners of a curry house infested with cockroaches have been fined £13,200.

An environmental health officer visited the Al Bilal restaurant at 87-91, Wilmslow Road and found about 20 of the pests 'crawling around the kitchen, bar and restaurant area'.

The inspector found cockroaches were living in equipment, food containers, drinking glasses and pipework in the kitchen.

He found dirt and food debris on the kitchen walls and underneath cookers and fridges.

His report said that food storage bins were dirty and plate and storage racks were rusty and covered with a thick layer of dirt.

Closed

As a result of his findings in August, the restaurant was closed immediately while the owners treated the infestation and cleaned the premises and equipment. It was allowed to reopen nine days later.

One of the owners told the MEN that Al Bilal has passed two subsequent inspections with flying colours and that the staff responsible for the dirty conditions have been sacked.

Coun Eddy Newman, described the conditions as completely unacceptable.

He added: "The level of the fine reflects how seriously we view this offence.

"The city council will not tolerate any food business which operates without regard for public safety and this case should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks they can get away with poor standards of food hygiene."

Kickstone Ltd, trading as Al Bilal, pleaded guilty to six offences under the Food Hygiene Regulations at Manchester magistrates court on April 9.

They were fined £2,000 for each offence and ordered to pay £1,200 costs - a total of £13,200.

One of the restaurant's owners, who did not wish to be named, said those responsible had been sacked.

He added: "We're talking about a restaurant that has previously been the cleanest in Manchester.

Lazy

"I was away in Pakistan when this visit was carried out. Some of the staff had been lazy with the cleaning and I sacked them when I got back.

"Since then we have had two visits and they have both been very good.

"This will not happen again."


Source Manchester Evening News

P-rice-s rattle restauranteurs

Any big increase in the price of rice causes real problems for poor families in countries where it's the staple food. But here in the UK higher rice costs don't really mean you'll struggle to feed your children.

Though if rice is a major part of your business then price hikes can seriously dent your bottom line.

Nahim Aslam's company is having to find an extra £140 every week just to buy rice now prices have risen.

They get through sack-loads at his Indian restaurant in Ashton-under-Lyne and over the course of the year he's looking at a total loss of around £7,000 since prices on the world market soared.

So why doesn't he just pass it on to his customers who're hardly going to complain at a serving of boiled rice going up from, say, £1.50 to £2?

His answer is simple. It would mean having to pay designers and printers to produce a new menu, which in itself would cost a small fortune.

So he's stuck, absorbing the cost himself.

Declining stocks

Greater Manchester's Chamber of Commerce says some restaurant owners on the city's "Curry Mile" are so worried at the rising cost of produce - for example cooking oil and lentils have both gone up too - that there are fears staff may have to be laid off.

The UK imports 400,000 tonnes of rice every year according to The Rice Association, a trade body representing British importers and millers.

Forty percent of it is basmati rice from Pakistan and India. And the association's director, Alex Waugh, says its cost has leapt by 120% in the last year.

"Supply has not kept pace with the demand for rice, which has gone up as populations increase.

"So over the last five years there's been a steep decline in stocks. Before, some 35% of annual supply would come from reserves. Now that figure's just 15%."

But the economic crunch in rice prices is also a result of social changes.

"Basmati rice used to be essentially an export commodity in India," he says. "But the growing middle class there now wants to buy it too, as it's a higher quality grain."

Rises in the price of rice don't affect the majority of consumers in the UK, as much as rises in the price of staples such as wheat do.

Although there are significant communities - South Asian, Chinese and others - for whom it is a problem.

For families, the grocery bills are getting bigger at home. And for those in the restaurant or take-away trade, profits are being squeezed.

Source : BBC News

Curry Announcement : Jalfrezi

Our next curry is to be held at the Jalfrezi Indian food bar (Bramhall, Stockport) in April 2008.

The Jalfrezi, which when translated means 'hot chilli pepper', was previously visited by the Curry Council in March 2007 but was sadly not reviewed.

The ambience of Jalfrezi Indian Restaurant is excellent with a contemporary décor giving a relaxed atmosphere and this is borne out by words on the front of the menu "The essence of good food is time".

Please refer to your individual email and SMS invites for the exact details. Confirm your attendance to Chris Marchbank-Smith ASAP.

Review to be published soon

Cobra keen to leave the curry house

Cobra, the beer owned by Asian manufacturing and branding star Lord Bilimoria, is launching a £14m advertising campaign aimed at turning the niche brew into one of Britain's top ten lagers.

Adrian McKeon, the new chief executive, said the TV and print campaign, which will start in the summer, would put the independent company in the same marketing spending bracket as the country's leading brewers.

The move comes alongside talks about distribution deals with 20,000 independent pub companies as well as a tie-up with another major pub group to expand Cobra's reach outside the restaurant industry. The company already has a deal with Wetherspoons.

'Just under half of all men in the UK have had Indian food in the past four weeks and in that market we have 97% penetration,' said McKeon. 'We need to persuade those men in the 28 to 33 age group that it is OK to drink Cobra even when not in an Indian restaurant.'

Bilimoria, 46, is the son of an Indian army general and entered the House of Lords last year as a crossbencher. But his rise to fame began 18 years ago when he spotted that the UK was falling in love with curry.

He borrowed £20,000 and launched his beer brand, going door-to-door persuading restaurants to stock it. Sales of Cobra now top £43m a year.

Source : This Is Money

Breaking News - Moti Mahal Restaurant Closes !

The Moti Mahal Indian Restaurant in Hazel Grove (Stockport) closed for business on the 2nd April 2008.

The photo below shows that a notice of peaceable entry has been served on the Macclesfield Road Restaurant. The statement indicates that the restaurant has "non-payment of rent" and that the "building lease is therefore terminated".

The Moti Mahal was established in 2004 and faced competition from other popular Indian Restaurant's in Hazel Grove (Blue Nile, The Nobin) and Poynton (Deeba and Ruby).

The Curry Council did not have the privilege of visiting this establishment and hope that the restaurant can resolves these issues in the near future.

Brown urges curry house training

People in Britain will be trained up to fill staff shortages in curry houses, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.

The industry fears it will be hit hard by a new points-system for workers from outside the EU.
Mr Brown was asked to help ease shortages in kitchen staff, who used to be largely recruited from Bangladesh.

Mr Brown said he believed they had come to a "fair" position on immigration but he wanted to help people already in Britain train up to fill the jobs.

Last month the Home Office was urged to ease new restrictions on migrant workers for curry restaurants, of which there are about 9,000 in the UK.

Lack of staff

It is thought the industry employs at least 50,000 people - the majority of restaurants are Bangladeshi owned.

During his press conference Mr Brown was told there were about 25,000 unfilled vacancies in kitchens and some restaurants are faced with the threat of closure over a lack of staff.

Mr Brown said: "We will make it possible for people who are in this country to be trained to be either chefs or restaurant workers in the industry.

"We are doing far more to train than every before. We know there are people who, if trained, could make a contribution to the industry."

He said it was important, not only so people could contribute towards the British economy, but to become productive workers earning good salaries.

'Irreparable damage'

"We have come to a position on immigration that I believe people will see is a fair one," he said.
"That the new Australian points system is one that gives us the opportunity to decide on occasions what are the right needs for the British economy.

"But I have no doubt at the moment that one of the things we should be concentrating on is helping people in this country train for the industry, that is a very important industry and a very important part of our economy."

According to the Immigration Advisory Service, restrictions on lower-skilled workers from outside the EU are causing a labour shortage so severe it could cause "irreparable damage" to the curry industry.

It argues that attempts to get eastern Europeans to work in curry restaurants have failed because they do not have the "cultural sensitivity" required.

It wrote to the immigration minister Liam Byrne asking for the rules to be relaxed for catering workers from Bangladesh. But government officials said they had no plans to review the current arrangements.

Reference: BBC Online