East to best

Last month, in a restaurant review in London's Evening Standard, food critic Charles Campion asked a valid question: "Why do we have this blind spot when it comes to associating excellence with Indian food?"

The blind spot seems to lie with the historical image of the cheap, high-street curry house, which used to be the last stop in a beer-filled evening. This image has its origin in the Midlands.

Top restaurants, such as London's La Porte des Indes and Veeraswamy, and those outside the capital, such as Le Raj in Epsom Downs in Surrey, or the Yorkshire-based Aagrah chain of Kashmiri eateries - which are merely a few in an ocean of more than 20,000 ethnic restaurant outlets - see this as a wholly unfair situation.

The owners say that, although they have to pay the same rent, rates and staff costs as similar fine-dining eateries, they can't charge the same prices because of the public's perceptions. For instance, Zaika on London's Fulham Road - the restaurant which Campion was reviewing - has, according to Harden's London Restaurants 2001, an average spend of £39, which is easily eclipsed by nearby neighbour Bibendum, which has an average spend of about £60.

Laying the blame

The reasons for this really rile Namita Panjabi, owner of London restaurants Chutney Mary and Veeraswamy. She says that, because it's Indian food, people believe it should be cheaper than its European equivalent. Panjabi lays the blame for this not only at the door of her customers, but at the food guidebooks and food critics.

And she is at a loss to understand why it should be so. She says: "We pay the same rates as neighbouring fine-dining eateries - more than £100,000 at the Chutney Mary on the King's Road [which has a combined revenue with Veeraswamy in excess of £2m]. We are paying the same whack for general managers and for our meat, vegetables and fish. These are all the same as the top Western restaurants.

"None of the Indian fine-dining proprietors casts any aspersions on the high-street Indian eateries - actually, the opposite is true. But the neighbourhood restaurants are not in good locations - it's a mama-papa joint where they don't pay professional people. They are buying their meat on the cheap, don't have the staff in their restaurants, and it's a very different cuisine."

She adds, passionately: "I'm not knocking them - they do great things - but it's a million miles from what we eat in India. It's formula food. It's what McDonald's is to Western food - basically fast Indian food."

Uphill battle

Getting away from this image has been an uphill battle for some eateries. Enam Ali, owner of the 96-seat Le Raj in Epsom Downs, where the average spend is £40 without drink, says that when he opened his restaurant 10 years ago he had to have familiar Indian dishes on the menu before gradually introducing his own special recipes. "We had to sell onion bhajis and chicken Madras before I could put my own specialities on the menu," he says, "because that's what people recognised. It's taken me 10 years to get to this stage."

The same difficulties are happening outside the London area. Mohammed Aslam, owner of the seven-strong Aagrah chain, says that it has taken him 23 years to steer customers away from the idea that his restaurants are just curry houses. Even though the average spend over all the restaurants, which have a combined turnover of £3.5m, is £15 per head, this is still three times more than the traditional Yorkshire Indian eaterie, and he still gets complaints that they are expensive.

So, can fine-dining Indian restaurants ever shake their cheap-and-cheerful image?

Re-educating the British public to accept that the food and service is of the same quality as in any top French or British restaurant is the logical first step. This is slowly happening, and has increased the momentum to open more fine-dining Indian restaurants. It influenced Claudio Pulze's decision to open Zaika. "When I first met Vineet Bhatia [chef at Zaika] and tasted his food," says Pulze, owner of Cuisine Collection, "I was convinced that opening an Indian restaurant with him would work. The public is becoming more and more educated about good food and therefore appreciates quality regardless of ethnic origins."

The UK's palate can be changed, as fish and chips has shown. Few people, for instance, would have thought that this champion dish of the working class would make an appearance, albeit in a spruced-up guise, on Western fine-dining menus. Rick Stein was certainly at the forefront of making fish trendy. "But the change is going to take time," believes Sherin Alexander-Mody, executive director of the Blue Elephant group, which includes the 300-seat, £35-per-head La Porte des Indes.

She says that the problem of how to differentiate fine dining from the high-street curry house was a concern for the company when it opened the restaurant in 1996. "To be honest," she says, "we didn't really find the answer, but we believed that if we gave them quality and professional service, the restaurant could be seen as being different."

Making sure that the restaurant stands out from those on the high street could be a key element for survival, according to Peter Smale, managing director of the Turpin Smale consultancy. "You have to sell it on the basis that it's an occasions place," he says, "because, if people are going to spend more than £25 per head, the whole experience has to be special."

Significant investment

He goes on to add that making a success of any business requires a significant amount of investment, especially in public relations and marketing. "Most British restaurateurs think that if they open a good restaurant they will be famous," says Smale, "but in any other sector it has to be marketing. They have to work just as hard to sell themselves, like any other business." He adds that Indian restaurants will continue to face a struggle, because a lot of new cuisines are coming into the marketplace.

Market research company Mintel points to the growing fad for fusion restaurants and claims that it will impact on the ethnic restaurant market in the UK. But, if anything, Britain's top Indian restaurants stand a better chance of surviving this onslaught than their counterparts in most other countries. As Alexander-Mody puts it: "Britain is an easier place to establish Indian restaurants, because of the immigrant population. In fact, London has more top speciality Indian restaurants than Bombay."

With standards like these and the chameleon-like nature of Indian cuisine, the fine-dining side seems set to grow.

THE ETHNIC RESTAURANT MARKET

Market research company Mintel estimates there to be about 20,000 ethnic restaurants in Britain, with what it calls the "mature Indian/Bengali sectors" dominating, with 55% of the market. But, in terms of outlet numbers, Chinese restaurants and take-aways dominate, with 12,000 compared with the 8,300 "Indian subcontinent curry houses".

Mintel puts the overall ethnic market value at an estimated £3b a year.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 19-25 October 2000