UK curry restaurants flounder in immigration soup
LONDON: Britain’s love affairs with Indian food is undergoing a crisis of sorts with the David Cameron government’s tough immigration policy making it difficult to recruit chefs from the Indian sub-continent, a situation the industry say is affecting quality and cost and leading to two curry houses closing down every week.
The £4-billion Indian food business has come a long way since Sake Dean Mohammed from Patna opened the first Indian restaurant in London in 1810. But changes to immigration laws, including a high salary threshold, have hit the industry hard.
“It is a major problem. There are a lot of barriers to hiring chefs from India now. Except for some restaurants, the quality of food has been going down while we have been forced to raise prices,” London-based celebrity chef Manoj Vasaikar told HT.
People from Romania, Hungary and other east European countries are allowed to work in Britain and are hard working, but they don’t — or can’t — possess the complex skills and knowledge required for Indian cooking, he added.
The government wants to train chefs within the country, but specialist colleges and apprentice schemes in recent years have not met the requirements of the industry.
The crisis figured in the House of Commons recently.
Labour MP Rupa Huq told chancellor George Osborne, “They are a great British institution and earn billions for our economy, so I am sure the chancellor will share my concern that two curry houses a week are closing due to government policies and the fact that the proposed specialist colleges have failed. As a fan himself, will he review the situation? He once likened the elements of a strong economy to those of a good curry, so will he take action to head off the coming curry crisis?” Osborne responded,
“We all enjoy a great British curry, but we want the curry chefs to be trained in Britain so we can provide jobs for people here. That is what our immigration controls provide.”
The ‘crisis’ has restaurant owners across Britain, including the Bangladesh Caterers Association with 12,000 members, worried.
Several ‘Indian’ restaurants in Britain are owned and run by people of Bangladeshi origin. “There have been cases of food poisoning because owners desperate for chefs make untrained people cook. Food quality has gone down a lot,” said Sunil Kumar, who came to Britain from Delhi in 1999 and is now a senior chef at a leading restaurant.The problem has been compounded by children of first-generation Indian restaurant owners choosing other professions, and by further curbs on Indian and other non-EU nationals planned by the government.