The British Curry Awards will recognise, congratulate and honour the contribution and extraordinary achievements of British Asian restaurateurs, who play a significant role in contributing to the nation’s economy and wealth. The event is an independent awards scheme, which reflects the highly professional nature of today’s British Curry industry, in an effort to find Britain’s Top 10 Regional Curry Restaurants.
More than 1000 VIPs and celebrity guests will attend this star-studded event consisting of a host of curry and restaurant aficionados, celebrity chefs, mainstream and Asian celebrities, public figures, MPs and other high profile dignitaries. This momentous year is no exception for leading hosts with main news anchor Alistair Stewart OBE rising to the challenge.
Enam Ali, founder of Spice Business Magazine, the UK’s leading Asian food and catering magazine, an eminent restaurateur and host of this prestigious gala event, comments:
“It brings me great pleasure to present this year’s British Curry Awards. Today ‘curry’ has become a national dish because our pioneers established restaurants in every corner of the UK and by doing so, contributed so much to British culture without achieving the personal recognition they deserved.”
The Indian restaurant industry has taken Britain by storm, as nearly two-thirds of the nations diners prefer to eat curry, with more Indian restaurants in London alone to choose from than in Delhi and Bombay combined. Furthermore, just 30 years ago, there were fewer than 500 curry restaurants in the UK, while today there are more than 10,000 employing approximately 80,000 people and turning over £3.2 billion a year.
The Awards will be open to all restaurants serving primarily Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, or modern fusion cuisine. Last year, more than 2,800 restaurants were nominated for entry by 13,000 members of the public, making the British Curry Awards the most representative as well as the largest awards in the industry. This year the awards have received over 20,000 public nominations.
Nominations for this year’s event were put forward from loyal customers and from these nominations, an initial shortlist of 100 restaurants were identified across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. From this list, 30 restaurants will be selected and evaluated by an independent panel of expert judges selected by Spice Business Magazine, and the Top 10 restaurants will be announced at the awards evening - the event’s most coveted category.
Jeremy Symons, Awards Coordinator for the British Curry Awards comments:
“The modern spice restaurant is now evolving to lead the way in décor and service as well as innovative cuisine. Our approach provides the most robust way possible of identifying, recognising and actively promoting the very best of these restaurants from all corners of the nation.”
This year’s event sees the introduction of a new awards category, the Supermarket Curry of the Year, where customers will be invited to nominate their favourite supermarket curry brands. In a keynote survey, retail sales accounted for 42% of total sales of Ethnic foods and were valued at £250 million. Also, curry fans spent £480 per minute in supermarkets and according to the survey a leading supermarket sells approximately 1.1 million packets of chicken tikka masala each year. So with customer spend on ethnic foods on an increase, it is no surprise as to why curry is the UK’s national dish.
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