Taking a quick glance at our high streets and corner shops, it would seem the British love affair with foreign food was eternal; where would we be without our curry on a Friday night or a Chinese with friends? However, according to Harden's, the restaurant guide, "Britain is definitely starting to fall out of love with ethnic cuisines." They go on to qualify this amazing statement by saying we are apparently no longer prepared to pay a lot of money for non-British food: indeed, the recession has meant we simply want more and more expensive comfort food.
According to the Top 100, a list compiled by Harden's with The Sunday Times, last year there were 21 Asian (Indian, Chinese, Japanese) establishments rated; this year, a mere 10. So on the face of it, we do appear to be less willing to eat out at high-end ethnic restaurants at this moment in time. Is it a one-off – a recession-led trend that will be reversed when the country's fortunes prosper, or is it a definitive parting of the ways for the British and their beloved Chicken Tikka?
Actually, we're not sure this list tells the whole story. The key to all of this is 'high-end', ie expensive. (At this point we ought to say Japanese has to be expensive to be any good – otherwise the fish is rubbish, to be frank). Indian and Chinese – often at their best – are foods of the poor, adding layers of flavour to cheap ingredients, be they pulses or vegetables, or using every last part of the animal to vary texture and taste throughout the dish. To then pay a lot of money for them seems curiously ignorant and dismissive of the culture within which these cuisines evolved. That's not to say that dodgy chicken curries and questionable sweet-and-sour pork are ethnic cuisine 'keeping it real', but it's surely a very Westernised way of taking the proverbial when we start paying in the hundreds of pounds for street food. Maybe the customer is sending a moral message here.
Or maybe it's a curious form of food snobbery. Why should we pay more for foreign cuisines when clearly – the inference is – the food worth our money is of course classic French and modern British? We don't need to spend lots of money to get an Indian or a Chinese of a weekend; it's not worth it. Or is it the reverse? We don't necessarily recognise excellent Indian or Chinese when it's placed in front of us and so we don't recognise the value of it when the bill comes?
What's your take on the take-out? Do you ever visit top-notch ethnic restaurants and do you ever blink at the bill? Or do you consign them to the post-beer blow-out and keep your pennies for Italian or Gastropub or a really good steak? Are we missing a real treat and if we continue to desert these restaurants, will we ever know how good it can get?
If the food is tasty, presented nicely, not overpriced and served in a friendly atmosphere, ethnic food is always a pleasant change from English dishes. As for takeaway, I'd rather eat home cooked, but that doesn't mean to say there is anything wrong with it, I just like what my wife cooks.
Do not forget fish and chips.