While British cuisine is mostly associated with eggs and chips and Yorkshire puddings, our wonderfully diverse population has brought us one other dish that’s become a staple in England: the curry. And where better to enjoy such a dish than our newest City of Culture: Bradford?
A city synonymous with Asian food – so much so it’s even been crowned the Curry Capital of Britain for six continuous years – Bradford knows a thing or two about slinging together a good old curry, and is home to a plethora of curry houses serving some of the most divine Indian and Pakistani cuisine in not only the North, but the entirety of England.
Boasting over 200 Asian restaurants, Bradford’s deep history with Asian cuisine dates back to the 1950s wool industry boom, when the city became a popular refuge and place of work for migrants from both India and Pakistan following the Second World War.
From then on, the city and surrounding areas became glittered with fragrant curry houses – serving traditional Kashmiri and Bangladeshi dishes, alongside British-invented varieties of curry such as Tikka Masala, the mild style of Korma we know here in the UK and hotter dishes tweaked to Western palates such as the Jalfrezi and Madras.
If you’re wondering where to start, visitors can rest assured that should you throw a stone in Bradford, it’ll most certainly land outside of a curry house – and rest even more assured that many of said curry houses are locally-acclaimed or award-winning for their delicious grub.
Bradford is home to widely-known restaurants such as Aagrah and some of the city’s oldest institutions such as The Sweet Centre, The Kashmir and The Karachi (AKA, all places where you’re guaranteed a delicious meal), each of which serves generations-old recipes that have helped carve Britain’s curry scene into the staple part of our culture that it is today.
How? You ask… The rich combination of home-style cooking passed down from generation to generation and bags and bags of flavour, bringing a sense of warmth that can only be achieved by sticking to tradition.
[Featured image: Bradford City Hall/Tim Green/Flickr/CC BY 2.0]
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