We wanted to explore the differences between Indian takeout in the US and in the UK.
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00:00We're comparing all the differences
00:02between Indian takeout in the US and UK.
00:04This is Food Wars.
00:05Let's compare one of the UK's favorite curry dishes,
00:07chicken tikka masala.
00:09Here's the one we got today.
00:10It's probably more on the orange side
00:11compared to some of the very vibrant red ones
00:13that you will see in the UK.
00:15To me, this seems like a pretty standard portion.
00:21Slight problem, it's too heavy for our scales.
00:23The scales we have in the UK only go up to around 550 grams.
00:27These aren't much heavier than that.
00:29I'd hazard a guess at maybe 650 grams.
00:32I'm gonna fish out all the pieces, put them in here,
00:33and then weigh it to see who's getting more pieces
00:36and how much they weigh.
00:37One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
00:46Nine.
00:48Now that I've got the chicken out of it,
00:49this actually might be light enough
00:50to weigh on its own as well, so.
00:52So the sauce weighed 290 and the chicken weighed 350,
00:55so I was actually pretty close with my guess.
00:57I think in total, this came to around 640 grams.
00:59I am going to weigh it in the container it comes in.
01:02It shouldn't contribute that much to the final weight.
01:05Whoa, okay.
01:06For once, we're coming out under.
01:08We are at 586 grams for the chicken tikka masala,
01:13versus the UK's 650 grams.
01:17That's a pretty decent amount.
01:19Moving on to samosas,
01:20although I will say this can vary wildly in the UK
01:22depending on where you're ordering from.
01:24But today, we got a portion of three samosas.
01:26I would describe these as medium size,
01:28maybe on the smaller side as far as samosas go.
01:31I have seen ones kind of like this big before.
01:35Trying to gesture for a big one.
01:37We only get two here in the US.
01:39I think this also varies place to place,
01:41the amount, the sizes.
01:43I can already tell that these are way bigger
01:45than the samosas we saw from the UK,
01:47but let's see how big they are.
01:52So in the US, we get one piece of naan.
01:55It is quite large.
01:56If you order naan in the UK,
01:57they typically just give you one piece.
02:01We're also gonna weigh it.
02:05I would say that this naan looks thinner
02:08than the one in the UK.
02:10It does look a little flatter.
02:11This looks pretty good.
02:13It's like decently thick,
02:14particularly around the outsides.
02:16Plenty of garlic and herbs on top.
02:18In the UK, it's pretty common
02:19to enjoy some rice with your curry,
02:20although it's often shared between two people.
02:22Here is some UK rice,
02:24served in one of the iconic folding foil boxes.
02:28This is just plain rice.
02:29Pilau is maybe more popular.
02:30In the US, curry and rice
02:31usually come in separate containers like this.
02:34The rice is usually basmati or jasmine,
02:37some kind of long grain rice.
02:39Also, if I'm saying anything incorrectly,
02:41I am so sorry.
02:43A major difference between US Indian takeout
02:45and UK Indian takeout is that our curries
02:48usually always come with a side of rice.
02:50Like, automatically,
02:51you don't have to add them on as an additional side.
02:54Let's weigh our rice.
02:58Here's everything you can order for takeout
03:00at an Indian restaurant in the US
03:01that you might not be able to find in the UK.
03:04Here is everything you'll find
03:05on a UK Indian takeout menu.
03:07I finally know how smithy felt.
03:08Some of the dishes we're gonna be talking about
03:10you'll see in both countries,
03:12but we still wanted to compare them
03:13just to see what the difference really is.
03:15First up, we've got our butter curries.
03:17Like the name suggests,
03:19this base is made up of butter,
03:20tomatoes, onions, and spices,
03:22and it has a really creamy texture.
03:25It's not very spicy at all.
03:26Butter chicken is a pretty popular choice in the UK.
03:29It's similar in spice to Korma,
03:30which I would say is the other one
03:31that people order if they don't really like spice,
03:34but they still want to enjoy a tasty curry.
03:36I do have a soft spot for butter chicken.
03:37I didn't really used to like spicy food,
03:38so Korma and butter chicken
03:40were like my gateway into Indian food.
03:43As the name suggests, buttery, creamy, rich, very tasty.
03:48So here we have our butter paneer,
03:50our butter chicken, and butter salmon,
03:53which confused me.
03:55I had never heard of it before,
03:56but I feel like we have to try it because of that.
03:58I don't really like salmon.
04:00I should start off by saying that
04:01I don't really like cooked salmon.
04:03Raw salmon, I can eat it all day.
04:05These are huge chunks of salmon!
04:11I'm mostly just tasting the curry,
04:12which is why I think I don't hate it.
04:15The texture is not as good, in my opinion,
04:18than a chicken or probably the paneer,
04:20but it's not bad because you mostly just taste the curry,
04:24so it covers up any other flavors.
04:28The texture kind of reminds me of tofu, but it's so good.
04:32We have the chicken tikka masala.
04:34It's a slightly spicier and tangier curry
04:36when compared to something like a Korma or a butter chicken.
04:39Again, though, it's still a very approachable level of spice,
04:41kind of almost designed to suit the British palette,
04:44you know, nothing too extreme.
04:45I love this.
04:47There's a reason that Brits love this thing so much.
04:49It's just so tasty.
04:50It does vary depending on the place that you get it from.
04:53The color can change a lot.
04:54This one is a nice, like, burnished orange color.
04:58One thing that you'll find on a UK Indian takeout menu
05:00is that you can customize the protein
05:02that you put in the curry.
05:03The general options will include chicken, lamb,
05:06vegetables, king prawn, and maybe some others as well.
05:09Moving on to our tikka masalas,
05:11we have paneer, chicken, shrimp, lamb, and vegetable.
05:16I have to try the shrimp.
05:18I've never had shrimp tikka masala in my life,
05:20and that just sounds really good to me.
05:21I love shrimp.
05:22I wouldn't say that this shrimp is particularly prawn-sized,
05:27like, as big as a shrimp in the UK,
05:29but this is a hearty shrimp to me.
05:34The texture of the shrimp definitely feels a little too hard,
05:37like it was overcooked, but it still tastes good.
05:40It tastes like shrimp in a very delicious curry,
05:42which is what it is.
05:44I honestly feel like the proteins or the vegetables in curries
05:47don't really influence the taste of them to me a lot.
05:51It's just like a texture thing for me.
05:54Compared to the butter chicken,
05:55I would say that the tikka masala curry is a bit tangier.
05:58I felt like the butter chicken is softer in terms of flavor,
06:02maybe even a little sweeter,
06:04but yeah, there's definitely a difference.
06:06Then today, we also got a chana masala.
06:08As you can see by the sheer quantity of them in this dish,
06:11chana refers to chickpeas in a curry dish.
06:14Here we have our vegan masala dishes.
06:16So this one here is mushroom masala.
06:20Then we have chana masala.
06:22And finally, bindi masala, which I believe is okra.
06:27I hate mushrooms,
06:28so I will not be trying the mushroom masala.
06:30Sorry about it.
06:31I think you can tell by looking at all three
06:33of our vegan masala options that they're not the same base.
06:36Some are more runny, while some are a bit more dry.
06:40Let's take a bite of the chana masala.
06:46I like this texture so much more.
06:48I think it's just because you can really get
06:50like the crunch of a chickpea.
06:52That's really good.
06:53It's not spicy at all.
06:55Now let's take a bite of the bindi masala.
06:58I don't think I know what okra tastes like,
07:00so this will probably be my first time trying it.
07:08It might be my last time having okra.
07:10I don't like the texture.
07:12The base itself is really tasty.
07:15It's really like...
07:16I keep using the same words, but it's got a lot of acid.
07:19It's got some bite, a little bit of heat.
07:21It's yummy.
07:22One of the spicier curries is vindaloo.
07:25It still contains some of the classic curry ingredients
07:27like onions, but gets more of a bite with the addition
07:30of ingredients like hotter chilies and vinegar.
07:32Vindaloo is traditionally a Goan recipe,
07:34but it's actually a version of a Portuguese dish called...
07:37Carne de vinho e alho.
07:40So here we have vegetable, chicken, and lamb vindaloo.
07:44I definitely smell the spice already,
07:47so I think these are gonna be pretty, pretty spicy.
07:50Vindaloo is one of those things that I do order often
07:53if I'm going to an Indian restaurant,
07:55but the spice levels vary.
07:57I haven't had a lamb dish yet,
07:58so let's dig into the lamb vindaloo.
08:01Here's a huge piece of lamb.
08:03You can definitely taste the addition of that vinegar
08:07in the curry itself.
08:08It's got a really nice acidic tang to it.
08:11The meat is perfectly cooked.
08:13It is spicy, but I'm okay.
08:16And I don't have a very high spice tolerance,
08:18and this is pretty good for me.
08:20I will say British people really love vindaloo's.
08:22They're kind of a cult classic over here.
08:23When curry houses were really taking off in popularity
08:26in the UK, which was around the 70s,
08:28the vindaloo was often the spiciest thing on the menu.
08:30The dish's cult status among blokes
08:32was kind of cemented in 1998
08:33when the band Fat Les released a song called Vindaloo.
08:36The song went on to become one of the unofficial anthems
08:38for the English national football team
08:40and is still sung to this day.
08:41Speaking of vindaloo, we do actually have one here,
08:43alongside a bunch of other curry dishes
08:45which you might typically find
08:46on a British Indian restaurant menu.
08:48In this case, the vindaloo actually was the spiciest dish
08:50on the menu at this place,
08:51so maybe not the smartest one to start at,
08:53but when has doing stupid stuff
08:55ever stopped me in the past?
08:56Yeah, it's got some heat.
08:58Oh no.
09:00I think lamb works so well with that
09:01because it's already rich, savory meat.
09:05Next up here, we have a lamb Rogan Josh.
09:07I'd say a Rogan Josh is probably more of a medium
09:09on the spice scale.
09:10It's a Kashmiri dish originally, I believe,
09:12and generally is flavored
09:13with quite a lot of tomato and peppers.
09:15I went lamb for this one as the meat as well.
09:21Very tomato-y.
09:22You get like the sweetness and the tang
09:23from the tomatoes there.
09:25Next up, we have a Madras curry.
09:27Generally speaking, on a British Indian takeout menu,
09:29you'll see the curry's kind of organized by spice.
09:32Vindaloo is usually number one.
09:34You might see a phal,
09:35which can be even higher than Vindaloo.
09:37And then generally, it's Madras pretty close to that,
09:39but below it.
09:40Madras actually gets its name
09:41because it was named after the city of Madras,
09:43which these days I think is called Chennai.
09:45Gets most of its spice just from chili powder.
09:48Peppery.
09:49Peppery, I would describe that as.
09:51Then the next one we have here is a Danzak.
09:53There's a lot of history behind this one.
09:55It kind of fuses Persian flavors
09:57with flavors from India.
09:58It's actually made with lentils
09:59in addition to a bunch of other spices,
10:02things like chili, ginger, cumin,
10:04and much, much more.
10:06Yeah, you get a real richness from those lentils, actually.
10:08Next up is a Pattaya.
10:10This one, in terms of like a broad flavor description,
10:12I would say is more like sweet and sour.
10:14Generally made with tamarind,
10:15in addition to the tomato paste and the chili.
10:18It just compliments each other so well.
10:20When you're looking at a British Indian takeout menu,
10:22it's hard to look past chicken korma.
10:24I'd say korma is probably even more gentle
10:27than butter chicken in terms of the spice level.
10:29This is very much your entry-level curry.
10:31If you've never tried Indian food before,
10:33you're very scared of spice and flavor,
10:36get a korma, ease yourself in,
10:38dip your toes in the delicious korma bath.
10:42The color of this is always great.
10:43It's always vibrant yellow.
10:45Effectively, they're using kind of like
10:47no chili powder whatsoever in this,
10:49so it's not getting any of that red-orange color.
10:52My brother used to work in an Indian restaurant,
10:53and the owner said that to most Indians,
10:56that's kind of like a dessert.
10:58It's that level of like sweetness and creaminess.
11:00Moving on, another dish you'll find
11:02at most UK curry houses is a Balty.
11:04Balty's got an interesting origin story.
11:05There are rumors that it was created in the UK
11:07in a curry house in Birmingham,
11:09although I actually don't think that's true.
11:10From what I was able to find,
11:11it was actually more from the Baltistan region.
11:14It's another one that I would say is kind of like medium
11:16to maybe even medium low on the spicy scale.
11:19Generally quite like garlicky, fragrant curry.
11:23Next up, we have a Buna.
11:24Buna is another iconic UK curry house dish,
11:27in part thanks to the iconic Gavin and Stacey bit
11:29with Smithy's order.
11:31You can probably tell from the color,
11:32it's slightly darker than some of the other ones
11:34that we've got here.
11:34It's actually generally because the way that it's cooked
11:37is that they cook it on quite a high heat,
11:39so you caramelize the ingredients a bit more,
11:41and you really produce this kind of like rich, deep flavor.
11:44Shout out to the taste of Raj for their gigantic prawns.
11:50Buna is beloved in the UK,
11:51and with flavors like that, you can see why.
11:54Next up, we have the Doppiazza.
11:56So Doppiazza actually means two onions in Urdu.
12:00As you will see, generally speaking,
12:01has quite a lot of onion in it.
12:03It's sometimes topped with onion as a garnish
12:05right at the end.
12:06Then finally, we have a meti.
12:08So meti is actually the Gujarati word for fenugreek,
12:11which is a herb which is pretty commonly used
12:13across a range of curries.
12:14Overall, we just seem to have a lot more options
12:16for curries than the US does.
12:18That way, people can try a little bit of everything.
12:20For good representation of a typical
12:21British curry house order,
12:23and also a window into the politics
12:24that can arrive when you're sharing dishes,
12:26go and watch the clip from Gavin and Stacey,
12:27because it really is pretty iconic.
12:29Next, let's go through our sog options.
12:31Sog is a dish that uses leafy green vegetables
12:34like spinach, mustard greens, fenugreek, or dill.
12:37We have sog paneer, lamb sog, aloo sog, chicken sog,
12:43and chana sog.
12:44I really wanna try the chana sog,
12:46so let's take a bite of this one.
12:49Look at all those chickpeas.
12:52This tastes like it's good for you,
12:54which might be why I'm not loving it.
12:57I just feel like compared to the curries we've tried today,
13:02the samosas, pecoras, like, I don't know.
13:04It just feels like the flavor's kind of like
13:07a little low with this.
13:08There's nothing like really jumping out at me.
13:11I need a little more.
13:12It just tastes leafy, cause it is leafy.
13:14There's a ton of leaves in it.
13:16I'm gonna try a meat sog
13:18just to see if there's a little bit more flavor.
13:21Chunky, chunky meat.
13:23Okay, let's try it.
13:24Let's try one bite.
13:27Here we have a saag paneer.
13:33Paneer, of course, being that kind of
13:36quite firm Indian cheese.
13:38I love paneer.
13:39And then we also have a saag aloo.
13:42Both of these are great.
13:43I pretty much always order a saag paneer
13:45if I'm gonna get an Indian takeout.
13:46I'd say these are the main saag dishes
13:48that you might find on a UK curry house menu.
13:50Now, a classic British starter at an Indian takeout
13:53is an onion bhaji.
13:55It's basically just shredded onion.
13:57You then toss it in some flour, a bunch of seasonings
13:59and fry it to form a bhaji.
14:05Yeah, I think this one's lost some of its crisp in transit,
14:07but very tasty, well-flavored.
14:09I'm a fan.
14:10Here we have a chic kebab.
14:12So what they do here is to take a lamb mixture,
14:13well-spiced again, kind of mold it around skewers,
14:17and then either fry it or sometimes put it in a tandoor oven.
14:20Here we have chicken pakoras.
14:22Sometimes on Indian restaurant menus in the UK,
14:24you will see pakora and bhaji kind of used similarly
14:27or kind of interchangeably.
14:29Pakora in general can refer to kind of anything.
14:31So that includes things like meat.
14:32Obviously we have chicken pakora here.
14:34I also had a haggis pakora in Scotland one time.
14:36Fascinating stuff, pretty tasty.
14:38Next up we have lamb chops.
14:39Now these are a slightly fancier starter, I suppose.
14:42I wouldn't see these on a tonne of orders.
14:44I don't know, man.
14:44Indian restaurants do lamb very well.
14:52This next starter here is a king prawn butterfly.
14:54There's a lot of prawn on Indian restaurant menus in the UK.
14:57It's more common to include prawn as a kind of seafood
15:00or pescatarian option than it is to include just fish.
15:03It's pretty good.
15:04It is also seen as generally more of like a premium option.
15:06I feel like king prawn versions of a curry
15:08will cost a little bit more than the chicken
15:10or maybe the lamb.
15:10I don't know how typical this one is,
15:12but it was on the menu today, so we ordered it.
15:14This one is a grilled salmon starter.
15:16It's like a marinated salmon being grilled there,
15:18some good color on the skin.
15:20The last one that we have here is a king prawn puri.
15:23It doesn't look like any of the puri
15:24that I've seen before.
15:25Generally speaking, puri is like a thin sheet of dough,
15:28which is deep fried and as it deep fries,
15:30it kind of puffs up into like a ball.
15:32But the one we've got here is actually not puffed up,
15:35or maybe it was and then it deflated again.
15:37But as you can see, very much not 360 degrees.
15:42The UK also has samosas, but our appetizer menus
15:45are very samosa heavy.
15:47So we've got lamb, chicken, and veggie,
15:51and we've also got samosa chat,
15:52which is kind of like a deconstructed samosa.
15:55Samosa chat is a popular street food in India.
15:58It's basically a broken up samosa with chana masala,
16:01yogurt, and other chutneys.
16:03You can get different kinds of chat at various restaurants.
16:06Let's take a bite of the veggie samosa.
16:08These are so heavy.
16:15That is so good.
16:18Yummy.
16:19I'm not sure what kind of chutney this is,
16:21but it tastes like cilantro.
16:22It tastes very, very spicy.
16:24It's so delicious.
16:25There are also tandoori options.
16:27Tandoori is a high heat style of cooking
16:30that uses a tandoor, which is a type of oven.
16:32We have tandoori chicken and tandoori shrimp.
16:37I do want to take a bite of the shrimp.
16:41Smells really good.
16:42And it smells a little lemony, which I love.
16:47The char on it is what makes it taste so good, I think.
16:50It's really delicious.
16:51But the shrimp is still overcooked.
16:53We got a few example tandoori dishes today,
16:55including this tandoori chicken.
16:57Here we have some lamb tikka pieces,
16:59and then on the menu today, we also have chicken shashlik.
17:02There are some similarities
17:03between tikka and shashlik dishes.
17:06The differences actually come more in the marinade.
17:08So tikka traditionally has yogurt,
17:10whereas shashlik tends to have no yogurt in the marinade,
17:12instead using more things like tomato and other spices.
17:15Moving on, we have a couple of biryani dishes.
17:17Biryani is a rice dish that's wildly popular
17:20all across the Indian subcontinent, Asia as a whole.
17:22Basically, a lot of cultures have a version of this dish.
17:25You effectively just take a bunch of rice,
17:27loads of spices, often a meat, including a chicken,
17:29or a lamb, or vegetables.
17:31Cook them all down in one big pot.
17:32It's a dish that's often shared between maybe a family,
17:35or even cooked in an enormous batch
17:37for some kind of group celebration, like a wedding.
17:39We have two versions today.
17:40We've got a chicken biryani and also a veg biryani.
17:43One thing that you often find in a biryani is cardamom pods.
17:47Yeah.
17:48The cardamom really comes through in that.
17:51Really played before.
17:53Cook them.
17:54Next up, we have all of our biryani dishes.
17:57So we have vegetable, chicken, shrimp, and lamb.
18:02I'm gonna try my third shrimp dish,
18:04just because I'm determined to find one decently cooked shrimp.
18:07Is biryani traditionally more dry?
18:10Because this kind of tastes dry.
18:12The biryani did come with a side of raita,
18:15so I think I wanna try them together.
18:18The shrimp is actually not that bad in this one.
18:20It's the least hard of all the shrimps I've tried today.
18:23I think the addition of the raita was definitely needed,
18:27because it needed some moisture.
18:29It needed something to help soften up that rice again.
18:32So together, I think they're pretty good.
18:34Separately, less good.
18:36Many Brits like to enjoy their curry with a side of rice.
18:38Depending on where you're ordering from,
18:40you might find a lot of options for rice.
18:41The two most standard ones, I would say,
18:43are A, just plain rice, and B, pilau rice.
18:46Plain rice, obviously, is just boiled and steamed,
18:48whereas pilau rice is cooked down with a bunch of spices,
18:51maybe some butter in there as well.
18:52Often, it'll have this slight yellow color,
18:54which is usually given to it by the inclusion
18:56of things like turmeric or cumin.
18:58Notable ones there include things like the keema rice,
19:00which has pieces of minced meat in it,
19:02usually lamb when you see keema on the menu.
19:04Moving on to what's probably gonna be my favorite section,
19:07we have the breads.
19:08We have regular naan, garlic naan, onion culture,
19:12coconut naan, cilantro naan, and roti.
19:16At a UK Curry House, naan generally comes
19:18in a bunch of different forms.
19:19We just have a plain naan over here.
19:21Here we have a keema naan.
19:22Keema refers to minced meat.
19:25So typically, this will come stuffed with some meat.
19:30I love a keema naan.
19:31It does feel like you're squeezing unnecessary meat
19:33sometimes into the meal.
19:35Here we have a garlic naan.
19:36Maybe the most popular choice for most Brits,
19:38because it's effectively just garlic bread, which we love.
19:40Here we have vegetable naan.
19:42It's kind of full of like, almost like a vegetable paste.
19:46Definitely some potato going on there.
19:49Various other herbs.
19:50Here we have a Peshwari naan.
19:52This is what I will sometimes go for,
19:53although it can border on too sweet.
19:55Peshwari is coconut.
19:57So it's like a powdered, desiccated,
19:59spiced coconut mixture.
20:01Because if you're having a really spicy curry,
20:03this can work really well to kind of counterbalance it.
20:06I am interested to see what a coconut naan tastes like.
20:10So let's dig into this one first.
20:13That's not bad.
20:14That's actually quite delightful.
20:15I'm enjoying eating it.
20:18Okay.
20:19I could see this being really good
20:20with the more savory options of curries,
20:22a little sweet and savory, sweet and spicy mixture.
20:26So that's a surprising one, but a good one.
20:29Next up, we have a paratha.
20:30So a paratha is like,
20:31somewhere between a bread and a pastry.
20:34Because you generally get this like,
20:35kind of lamination going on.
20:37Lots of butter in there.
20:39So you get these lovely like, flaky layers.
20:42Tends to have like, a bit more rigidity to it.
20:44So it works quite well to scoop dishes like a dal.
20:47We also have an egg paratha here,
20:49which is the same, but has kind of been like,
20:50fried in some egg.
20:52Here we have a chapati.
20:55And then finally we have the puri.
20:56Again, I wouldn't say this is the best representation
20:59I've seen of a puri before.
21:01Now let's try the onion culture.
21:03I would order this.
21:04This is yummy.
21:05This one has more of like a texture element
21:08because of the pieces of onion in it.
21:11So that's kind of fun and it tastes really good.
21:13So papadoms are a pretty iconic British curry house staple.
21:16Some people like to ceremonially smash them
21:18with a big karate chop down the middle.
21:20When you get papadoms though,
21:21arguably the main event are the sides that come with it.
21:24I would say traditionally at a minimum,
21:25you get these three dips
21:27and they've also given us a big thing of onions today,
21:29which I guess works too.
21:30This one is lime pickle.
21:32As the name suggests,
21:33it's fundamentally a pickled lime dish,
21:35although it's often quite spicy.
21:36So there's a bunch of chili in there as well.
21:38Some other maybe peppers, capsicum,
21:41and it all forms this quite thick, spicy,
21:43very tangy paste.
21:46Let's got some kick.
21:47Oh!
21:48Then you often get a mint sauce.
21:50I can't stress enough that this will not usually come in a tub.
21:54I think it's because of the size of the order
21:56that we had to put in today.
21:56They thought we were maybe feeding a small army,
21:59so they've given us enormous tubs of these sides.
22:01My normal favorite dip for the papadoms is mango charni.
22:05Sweet, tangy, works really well with all of these.
22:08We also got a writer today.
22:10This is the UK version of writer.
22:12So writer, again, is a yogurty-based sauce.
22:14This one has lots of cucumber in it, very refreshing.
22:17Again, if you're ordering spicy curry,
22:19having one of these on standby is a must,
22:21just in case you get caught unawares.
22:22And then, as begrudged as I am to admit it,
22:24one of the most iconic side dishes
22:26on a British Indian restaurant menu is chips.
22:29Chips, for me, I think, are a real signifier
22:30of how well Indian cuisine has managed to adapt
22:32to the British palate.
22:33Not all British people like spicy food,
22:35although I will say it's probably slightly more
22:36than Joe tends to give us credit for.
22:38I will say, chips and curry sauce
22:40has become such an iconic pairing,
22:42kind of as a result of this.
22:43Also, just dipping chips into a korma
22:46is a really iconic British Indian takeout move,
22:48which, again, is probably going to upset
22:50actual Indian people, but it is good.
22:52Don't knock if you've tried it.
22:53Next, we have our sides.
22:55So we have an order of papadum.
22:58Papadum is made with graham flour,
23:00which is chickpea flour.
23:01The papadum came with a side of two sauces.
23:04We have a tamarind chutney and a cilantro chutney.
23:07Just like I mentioned before,
23:09how the white rice usually accompanies the curries,
23:12these two chutneys accompany samosas, papadums,
23:16usually your side or appetizers.
23:19We have more sides like raita.
23:21I think this is another sauce that varies from place to place.
23:25We also have mango chutney.
23:27And of course, we have our side of white rice.
23:30We got like 20 of these
23:31because of all the curries that we ordered.
23:34I've never had papadum before.
23:36So let's try some.
23:38I'm going to mix these two sauces.
23:43I made a little perfect bite.
23:45I'm going to take a loud bite,
23:46but just know that I'm not a loud eater.
23:48I just want you to hear how crispy this is.
23:50Okay.
23:53It's so chippy.
23:54It's got like a chip consistency to me.
23:56That is really good.
23:58Usually when you go to an Indian restaurant here,
24:01they'll bring out the papadum and some chutneys as like a starter,
24:04you know, like a chips and salsa kind of vibe.
24:06I am going to try the mango chutney as well with the papadum.
24:10Okay.
24:12Okay.
24:14Big old scoop of mango chutney.
24:16It weirdly almost has like the taste to me of a briny olive.
24:28If it, maybe it's like a vinegar or something that they've added to it
24:32to give it a little kick.
24:33There's something.
24:34There's something briny in it, but it's really good.
24:36It's difficult to do a drink section in a normal way
24:39because the offerings will vary wildly
24:40depending on the restaurant that you're ordering from.
24:42The place we ordered from today actually didn't deliver any drinks,
24:45but I did want to give a quick shout out to lager.
24:48Getting a pint with your curry is pretty much key
24:50to the British curry house experience.
24:52I don't really know where this started.
24:53I think there's a certain association with blokiness
24:55and curry houses in the UK.
24:57Or again, it might just be the fact that Indian restaurants
24:59wanted to appeal to the things that Brits most commonly wanted.
25:01Often that includes lagers, but there are a few specific lagers
25:04that you generally find on the menu at Indian restaurants
25:07that aren't commonly found elsewhere.
25:08I think just because they are pretty much only found
25:10on Indian restaurant menus in the UK,
25:12Cobra, Tiger, and a few others have really achieved kind of cult status.
25:16We also had several flavors of lassi on the menu.
25:19Unfortunately, I could only get one delivered, the mango lassi,
25:23but they also have sweet lassi and salted lassi.
25:27It does smell like lassi and it does smell like mangoes,
25:29so I'm pretty sure this isn't just a huge cup of vodka sauce
25:33or melted cheese.
25:36It's room temperature, which I don't want,
25:39but it tastes really, really good.
25:41Something that we did in the Chinese takeout episode
25:42that I was keen to do again was to plate up
25:44what I think is a kind of typical British Indian takeout plate.
25:47I'm going to do one here now.
25:48Nico, I think you should do one in the US as well.
25:50We'll start with the starters.
25:51A couple of bhaji's going on there.
25:54Probably a couple of samosas too.
25:56For kind of the foundation, generally speaking,
25:59I want rice in there.
26:00So we'll get some pilau rice, break it up a little bit.
26:05Start with the rice on the bottom and kind of layer the curry on top,
26:07and then all the rice is soaking up all of that gravy,
26:10all that sauce from the curry.
26:11Obviously, if it's a British Indian takeout meal,
26:14you've got to have your chicken tikka masala.
26:20Oh, yeah.
26:21I'm going to mix meats because I want some lamb in there as well.
26:24Here are some of the lamb, Rogan, Josh.
26:27Beautiful.
26:27Look at the tomato.
26:28I need some naan, which for me usually means garlic.
26:35I often find a whole naan is too much, but half is probably about right.
26:42And then for me, I've also got to get some sag paneer in there as well.
26:49I think for me, that's like pretty much everything I want.
26:51Obviously, some papadums to start with plenty of mango chutney,
26:54and maybe, guilty pleasure, a few chips on the side as well.
26:58That, for me, looks pretty excellent.
27:01It is time to make our plate of American Indian takeout.
27:05So let's start with our white rice.
27:08I'm just going to pop that in there.
27:10Whole thing.
27:12Okay, that's a lot of rice.
27:14I don't think we'd eat this much rice, but here's our rice.
27:17Next, we are going to go in with one of our curries right on top.
27:22I would say, if I had to guess, I think that butter chicken is probably
27:27the most popular curry amongst Americans.
27:30It's either that or chicken tikka masala for sure.
27:33But I don't know.
27:34I just feel like the American palate would more lean towards the butter chicken.
27:39Butter.
27:39We love it.
27:41If it was up to me, we'd be doing the lamb vindaloo or one of the other vindaloo's.
27:45But let's stick to what I think the American public would want,
27:49which is butter chicken and chicken tikka masala.
27:52Let's do a little mix of both.
27:56Here's our butter chick- chicken.
28:00The tikka masala and the butter chicken look almost identical.
28:03Next, I think that we're going to add a samosa for sure.
28:09This one's a veggie samosa.
28:12Maybe we'll tuck her right in there.
28:14So right next to our samosa, I added the dipping chutney.
28:20So we have our cilantro chutney and the tamarind chutney.
28:23Of course, we have to add some naan.
28:25I'm going for the garlic naan.
28:26I feel like this is a really popular option here.
28:30The last thing that I would add is a mango lassi because I usually order a spicy curry.
28:36That helps tame and balance out some of that spice.
28:38So it's a must have for me.
28:40But this is what I think Indian takeout looks like in America.
28:44I think this gives us a pretty good idea of what people here are ordering.
28:48This is how I would eat it.
28:50This is how I like to eat my curry.
28:52Along with, I think, a bajillion other people.
28:54Just tear off a piece of the naan.
28:56I overstuff this plate so bad.
28:59And just pick up a huge scoop.
29:02I don't think my chicken's going to make it.
29:04Scoop of the curry and the rice.
29:08That's good stuff.
29:13India is a massive country with many subcultures and different climates.
29:16So there's a lot of diversity when it comes to the food.
29:18For example, North Indian cuisine tends to favor wheat-based foods like naan.
29:22South Indian cuisine tends to favor rice and lentil-based dishes like idlis and dosas.
29:27Weather and soil conditions also play a huge part in this.
29:30The South gets a ton of rain, which is ideal for cultivating rice.
29:34Seafood is also more common in the coastal regions of India.
29:37You'll see a lot of fish, shrimp, and crab dishes.
29:40It is a peninsula, so that makes sense.
29:42Many cuisines across the world have been influenced by globalization and colonization,
29:46and India is no exception.
29:48Foods like tomatoes, peas, cauliflower, chilies, and potato are now very common in Indian cuisine,
29:53but aren't actually native to the region.
29:55Tomatoes, for example, were brought to India by the Portuguese, who got them from Mexico,
29:59even though they're actually native to South America.
30:01Lots going on.
30:02The origins of many dishes that became really popular across the 20th century are still hotly contested.
30:07Examples include things like butter chicken and tikka masala,
30:10whose origins are still being debated today.
30:12Some of the most important ingredients to come from India are spices.
30:16India is the largest producer of spices in the world,
30:18and the estimated total spice production in the country reached 11.1 million metric tons in 2023.
30:25Some of its most exported spices are cumin, cilantro, cardamom, and turmeric, the golden spice.
30:31I was just made aware that coriander and cilantro are the same thing.
30:36The history of Indian restaurants in America is a bit murky.
30:39Record keeping wasn't the best, but one of the first South Asian restaurants in New York City
30:43was the Ceylon India Inn, which was founded by K.E. Monkira in 1913.
30:48It catered to a lot of South Asian workers who lived in nearby boarding houses.
30:52In an article published by the New York Times in 1921,
30:55Helen Bullitt-Lowry describes another one of the first Indian restaurants in New York City.
30:59She doesn't mention the name of the restaurant, but it's speculated that she was referring to
31:03the Taj Mahal Hindu restaurant, which opened in 1918.
31:07Aside from being a part of the quickly expanding culinary culture of the city,
31:11these restaurants also served as gathering spots for South Asian immigrants.
31:14The first Indian restaurant in the UK, the Hindustani Coffee House,
31:17actually opened in London in 1810,
31:20which was 50 years before the first fish and chip restaurant in the UK.
31:23Even before that, Indian influence had been brought back to the UK,
31:26as the Brits started trading in that region through the East India Trading Company.
31:30British coffee houses would often have curries on their menus.
31:32In The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, a British cookbook from 1747,
31:38there was a recipe to Make Curry the Indian Way.
31:41This recipe was fairly light on spices, but did include things like turmeric, ginger and pepper.
31:46The colonization of India by the British led to more Brits being familiarized with Indian flavors and spices.
31:51Curry's popularity was boosted in England by Queen Victoria's love for it.
31:55She was given the title of Empress of India in 1877, and although she never visited the country,
32:00she really became fascinated by the culture of it, reportedly even learning some Hindustani.
32:04She reportedly also asked for curry to be cooked in the royal kitchens pretty much every day.
32:09Curry remained a dish mostly enjoyed by the upper classes in the UK,
32:12until after the Second World War, when increased immigration from India to the UK
32:15led to an explosion in curry houses popping up all over the country.
32:19Indian food in the US is a lot more generalized, so you'll see similar dishes on most venues.
32:24That's likely because they're catering to American palates
32:28and focusing on the dishes that people here would recognize.
32:31As we said before, India is a huge country with a ton of different culinary styles and ingredients,
32:36so what we see as Indian food here is just a small taste of that.
32:40Nowadays, Indian restaurants are really found all over the UK.
32:43Just anecdotally speaking, I feel like if you grow up in a village or a town, pretty much wherever you are,
32:48you will have a curry house, a Chinese takeaway and a fish and chip shop.
32:51The city with the most Indian restaurants in the UK is Leicester in the East Midlands.
32:55Leicester has 49 Indian restaurants for every 100,000 people living there.
32:59Brits love Indian food so much that at one point in 2001,
33:02our foreign secretary declared chicken tikka to be our national dish.
33:06As somebody who did not grow up with any Indian food around me or in the home,
33:11I am really excited to see more and more Indian restaurants popping up, especially in these big cities.
33:16Takeout is not my preferred way of eating Indian food.
33:21I much prefer sitting down, having my curry freshly made right then and there in a restaurant,
33:28but I will say it's one of the better takeout cuisines I've ever had.
33:33It's weird because to me, Indian food is popular.
33:37It's something that me and all of my friends enjoy,
33:40but you leave a place like New York City and I feel like less people have tried it.
33:46I just don't think there's as much accessibility to Indian takeout places.
33:51It's not like it is with something like Chinese food,
33:53where we have these mom and pop Chinese food places,
33:56but we also have these giant chains like P.F. Chang's Panda Express.
34:00Yeah, they're not authentic to the cuisine,
34:03but they kind of give people a taste of an American version of that cuisine.
34:08I think it does very much depend on which restaurant you're going to,
34:11as to how authentic to Indian cuisine the British Indian food will be.
34:15Some of them may be pretty authentic,
34:16but in general I do think maybe when it comes to the bright red chicken tikka masala sauce
34:20that you might find, it's probably not going to be what you find in India,
34:24but British people do love it so much.
34:25We really, really do love our curry.
34:27Do you see that okay, is it?
34:35Yeah, it's weird.
34:37I've never seen anyone hold a naan up like that.
34:42My trophy naan.