An Indian banquet prepared for one of the city's Ashoka restaurants.
Many Glaswegians discovered the delights of Indian cuisine in the days of the British Empire, when they travelled to the sub-continent as businessmen, civil servants and engineers. However, the popular taste for curry grew from the 1960s. The first Punjabi or Indo-Pakistani restaurants (commonly referred to simply as "Indian") included the Koh-I-Noor in Gibson Street (opened 1960) and the Greengate at the corner of Gibson and Bank Streets, opened by the N Mohammed in 1961. In 1964 Mr Mohammed and his son Ali opened the Shish Mahal in Gibson Street and others followed, so that the street was nicknamed "Curry Valley" by the late 1970s. Other curry "hot spots" included the Kelvingrove and Charing Cross areas.
Indian restaurants were initially popular with students and with late night revellers attracted by restaurants that opened late and offered tasty and filling (and exotic!) meals at low prices. Menus were initially quite simple, and styles rarely moved far from standard curry dishes with the option of a "Madras" (hot) and "vindaloo" (very hot indeed) sauce. However, the Glaswegian taste for foreign food matured and became more adventurous. During the 1990s, Glasgow's Indian restaurants introduced their customers to increasingly sophisticated and subtly-flavoured dishes from the Indian sub-continent.
Reproduced with the permission of Harlequin Restaurants
Keywords:
Asians, curries, Curry Valley, eating, Greengate, Indian food, Indian restaurants, Indians, Indo-Pakistani food, Koh-i-Noor, madras, Pakistanis, Punjabi food, Shish Mahal, vindaloos
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