CityLife

National Curry Week generates competition

Indian Ocean receiving its British Curry Award

WHEN do you reckon the first curry house was opened in Britain? The Sixties? Ten years earlier? The first recorded South Asian restaurant in Rusholme – along what later went on to become The Curry Mile, reputedly the highest concentration of such places in the land – was in 1959.

But I’m afraid the capital beats us hands down. This year’s National Curry Week, which runs from Sunday, celebrates the 200th anniversary of the first Indian restaurant in the country – the Hindoostanee Coffee House which opened in London in 1809.

The week is designed to celebrate our “national dish,” served in more than 9,000 curry restaurants across the country, and also to raise money for its charity, The Curry Tree.

One restaurant which has backed the week before and is doing so this year is Indian Ocean, in Ashton under Lyne. During National Curry Week 2007 it was entered into the Guinness Book Of Records for creating a stack of poppadoms 4ft 10ins tall. I wonder how much mango chutney they had to come up with?

Next Friday, the Stamford Street East restaurant – recently named Best Indian Restaurant In The North West for the third year running in the British Curry Awards – is going head-to-head with a London restaurant to see which can make the most samosas in 10 minutes.

The chefs, lead by Nahim Aslam, who recently set the Guinness Book Of World Records target for cooking the most naan breads in an hour, will face a strong challenge from Brilliant restaurant.

Both sets of 10 chefs will use pre-prepared samosa fillings which will be hand-wrapped and then cooked for about two minutes before an independent customer taste test to confirm they are the real deal.

For more information and recipes for National Curry Week, visit nationalcurryweek.co.uk.