Why London restaurant Veeraswamy’s got a notice from the Crown Estate

The Mahatma might have gone on a hunger strike in protest. And his arch-adversary Churchill would have sided with him, declaring it a piece of impertinence up with which he would not put. The two would have been joined by a stellar cast, including Charlie Chaplin, Marlon Brando, and Vivien Leigh.

The reason for their collective umbrage? The threatened closure by Britain’s Crown Estate of London’s most venerable and venerated Indian restaurant, the Michelin-rated Veeraswamy, which is currently celebrating its centenary. The iconic restaurant — which has hosted international celebrities from the realms of politics, filmdom, and other halls of fame — faces being ousted from its premises in the historic Victoria House on Regent Street by the Crown Estate, a collection of land and assets worth some £16 bn belonging to the British monarch.

The Crown Estate is reportedly refusing to renew Veeraswamy’s lease on the grounds that it needs to renovate the building as ‘the structure is in poor condition,’ while offering to help shift the restaurant to another unspecified location


Read more: Never mind the type, Swaraj is your biryani & you shall have it!

Challenging the eviction, Ranjit Mathrani of MW Eat, the company which owns Veeraswamy, has implied that the Crown Estate is resorting to culinary racism.

‘Would they have handled this the same way had it been a notable French or European restaurant? One of the only reasons I can think of is that they do not regard Indian cuisine as being of the same importance, level, or sophistication as French food,’ says Mathrani, who has, essentially, taken King Charles, the Crown Estate’s ‘corporation sole’ to court.

In a bid to settle the matter out of court, Mathrani has appealed indirectly to the monarchy, pointing out that Veeraswamy is the only outside restaurant to have catered for events at Buckingham Palace, not once, but twice, adding that the late queen ‘valued Veeraswamy and appreciated it, but I can’t speak for the king, one way or the other.’

However, MW Eat’s insinuations of dietary discrimination and alimentary apartheid might be difficult to swallow, given that chicken tikka masala ruled the Sunday Roast as Britain’s national dish, before being demoted to second place by jalfrezi, also of subcontinental provenance.

The British Raj had a taste for India, quite literally, as this colonialera doggerel rhyme shows: ‘In vain our hard fate we repine,/ In vain our fortune we rail,/ On Mullagheetawny we dine/ Or Congee in Bangalore jail.’

In orthographic disguise, the rhyme refers to, or the South Indian kanji, fermented rice gruel, said to be a marvellous aid to digestion.

Even as Indian languages enriched English with many words — like bungalow, jungle, pyjamas, and shampoo — English returned the compliment by giving Indian food preparations an anglophone articulation. Perhaps the bestknown of these is ‘ledikeni,’ a Bengali mishti/mithai made of chhena (unaged cheese), fried and soaked in sugar syrup.

Ledikeni is said to have been created by the Calcutta confectioner Bhim Chandra Nag in 1856, and named in honour of Charlotte Canning, wife of Charles Canning, governor-general, and then first viceroy, of India.

While opinions differ as to whether the creation of the swee commemorates her arrival in India or her birthday, the vicereine made it the preferred dessert for all her dinner parties. Helped by such aristocratic endorsement, the Ledikeni gained popularity, which it still enjoys.

Another example of culinary cross-culturalism is the kobiraji cutlet, a non-vegetarian patty covered in a lacy net of egg batter and deep-fried. ‘Kobiraj, in this context, does not refer to a traditional physician, but is a coinage of what that magisterial glossary of Indian-English, Hobson Jobson, calls ‘Kitchen English’, and is a vernacularised version of ‘coverage’, referring to a ‘covered’ cutlet.

Whatever its etymology, kobiraji remains as sought after in Kolkata as it was when Tagore is said to have inspired its creation in his favourite noshery, Basanta Cabin.

With such noble and Nobel commendations, Indian cuisine can confidently take its rightful place on Britain’s bill of fare. Any alleged attempts to relegate it to second-class status and tell it to be gone with the vindaloo, ought to be read a stern Raita Act, and Veeraswamy and Co should blithely curry on regardless.