Over the years, restaurant users have become more discerning and more concerned with the ‘authenticity’ of their restaurant experience, a number of restaurant trends have emerged that offer a more realistic reflection of the food from its country of origin.
For the last couple of decades, far eastern food from various countries has increased in popularity, with many towns now having a Thai restaurant and perhaps even a Japanese restaurant. There has even been a trend for seeing authentic Thai food served on pub menus as Thai families take over pub tenancies or simply run the kitchen.
Japanese food has been a huge foodie trend in the UK, with most supermarkets selling packs of sushi alongside their sandwiches – although if that’s the only sushi you’ve tried (especially as the packs from a certain high end supermarket do not contain fish!) then you’ll be amazed at the difference in quality and taste when you first try ‘proper’ sushi. After all, sushi chefs train for seven years just to master making rice, let alone cutting fish!
The latest restaurant trends are towards South American food. Not just the big, juicy steaks from Argentina – that is SO 2007 – but more the smoked chipotle chile flavours of Peru. Mexico has also been a source of inspiration for a lot of newly opened places, with authentic burritos and salsas showing the wealth of difference between regional cuisine and the ‘Tex-Mex’ style that was popular in the 1999.
The Shish Kebab is originally an Iranian fast food delicacy. The term Shish Kebab comes from the Turkish for ‘Skewered Grilled Meat’. In Greece and Turkey a Shish Kebab is called a Souvlaki.
The dish is thought to have originated when the Medieval Turkish soldiers used their swords as a skewer to cook the meat over an open fire.
The typical Shish Kebab will be made from of cubes of chicken, lamb or other meat which are placed onto a skewer and then either grilled or roasted. It’s common to add a selection of vegetables, and the Shish kebab is one that can be easily customised to produce a healthier version of the meal.
Kashmiri is one of our favourite fast foods from takeaways, in the United Kingdom we each eat (on average) around 2.2 curries per week – costing us a total of £2.8 billion per year.
Indian and Kashmiri takeaways employ thousands. In the UK they employ more people than steel, mining and shipbuilding industries put together. You might wonder why if you eat at an Indian restaurant abroad, they don’t know what your favourite curry is. That’s because most of the dishes on UK Indian and Kasmiri menus are specific just to the UK. Many of the names for popular UK dishes were created by the people who introduced Indian take aways to Britain.
It might also surprise you to learn that the recipe for a Chicken Tikka Masala is different in nearly every Indian/Kashmiri takeaway!
