Immigration rules throttle supply of Indian cooks, shutting down Britain’s curry houses

If Sherlock were to investigate the curious case of the disappearing curry houses — 2,000 of them across Britain have vanished in the last five years — he would have to look no farther than immigration rules, which throttle inflow of Indian kitchen staff and induce a gush of East European blood instead. The vast numbers of subcontinental immigrants in Britain during and for the first few decades after the British Raj ensured not only a demand for, but also a supply of, curry for the former empire. And as the beer-swilling 20th-century descendants of Company Bahadur found succour in the spicy, sweat-generating ‘Indian’ restaurants of Britain after pubs closed, the Friday curry ‘tradition’ was born. But as all sorts of traditions are under fire these days the world over, Friday curry can hardly remain unsinged.

Indeed, Sherlock would deduce that by not knowing cardamom from cumin or korma from vindaloo, the current newly-minted (and cheaper) EU immigrant workforce from East Europe has contributed to, if not caused, the demise of curry houses. But on the positive side, this choking of South Asian immigration in favour of EU could eventually lead to new post-pub gastronomic traditions for Britons, though asking for a grzybowa or zacusca with one too many down the hatch may take some practice.