Diversity and the metropolitan diaspora

OK we have to accept a more-or-less economic definition of successful here (which I'm guessing will be fine for most folk) but the evidence tells us that more diverse places - that is places with lots of people who weren't born there - are more successful:

One of the most important ways for cities to get connected is through migration. Jim Russell and his collaborator Richey Piiparinen at Cleveland State University’s Center for Population Dynamics have been documenting how Cleveland has been getting more connected to the global world through this process. This includes foreign immigration but isn’t limited to that. A key part of it is the influx into places like Cleveland of people who have lived in major global cities like New York, then cycled out.

Now diversity isn't an absolute guarantor of success but within this work lies the germ of an economic development strategy that might rebalance England (bearing in mind that my country is, compared to most places, a pretty small place). This isn't about attracting skilled migrants from the other side of the world - or even from Paris - but rather to look at how you provide the opportunities for people to 'cycle out' from an increasingly expensive and intolerable London.

We've seen some of this 'cycling out' with the success of Brighton, Reading and now Bristol - all places close enough to London to allow for folk to scuttle back and forth. Other places may well begin to fit this pattern - Whitstable, Canterbury and even Margate. As London overheats the result is that innovators and creators relocate, taking the risk of a smaller pool against the certainty of greater affordability. In the USA this is now noticed - here's an article about chefs in New York:

Bret Thorn, senior editor at the trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News, agrees. “We are experiencing a serious brain drain from New York City,” he says. “Chefs leaving to move home to Cleveland (Dante Boccuzzi) and Minneapolis (Gavin Kaysen). You don’t have to put up with the exorbitant rents or deal with the general cost of doing business or the difficult community boards. You can go to Oklahoma City and have customers who are interested and will marvel at what New Yorkers might be bored with.”

We've yet to hit this point yet in England but it gets closer with each rent hike and each new regulation. Intemperate actions like the shutting down of Fabric don't help and neither does the understandable preference of local authorities for order and the interests of residents. London's fantastic - yes seriously Londoners, fantastic - public transport has helped the city keep these innovators as it's possible to move further from the expensive centre without losing connectivity.

The question for us to ask is what drives the success of these out-of-London places - why Margate and not Hastings, how come Bristol but not Leicester. Some of this is about access - good road and rail links - but this isn't the only factor. And looking at the evidence from the USA it's tracking the pioneers who go back home - the creator who decides to sell the overpriced two-bed flat in Greenwich and head back with the proceeds to Birmingham (or wherever) or the new entrepreneur who thinks success is more likely in their lower rent home town than in London.

Places like Bradford need to invest some time on their diaspora, in the connections that already exist. We moan and mither about the brain drain but simply ignore those brains once they've left. Perhaps part of the strategy is to talk to these exiles - most will have a soft spot for home (if only because of friends and family) and can be relied on to put in a good word. But maybe the big benefit comes when those people decide to take their well-gotten gains and head somewhere cheaper - if they've been loved by the home town even though they left, surely the chances of them returning are greater.

Of course, for me, the home town is London. And I can't afford it.

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Threats of violence and death are serious even if they're from a vegan

My meatloaf. Not a vegan dish.

Let's be clear. I think veganism is stupid. I've no problem with people who want to adopt the habit, I can put up with them going on about it all the time but I do not consider that vegans have any moral superiority and take the view that their diet is very likely to be unhealthy.

But if you want to be a vegan that's fine. Or rather it's fine until to decide to use violence to try and force your moral prejudices onto others:

The takeaway and couple have received considerable numbers of negative comments on social media – including its Facebook page ‒ such as being called “psychopaths” by user Robert Smith, and Denise Bottall, who said Sam Deeson was “evil”, and that she should “let me at him with a pair of scissors.” Facebook user Janet Tomsen called the practice “disgusting and murder”.

Again, I guess it's just about OK to use this sort of language - the 'let me at them with scissors' comment is getting pretty close to the line though. And that was just one example of organised mobs of vegans trying to destroy a business because they've decided that their supposed (and false) moral superiority justifies that action.

Sadly this isn't a one-off and, because the targeting of restaurants by vegans is not dealt with by the police, the problem is escalating:

"As soon as the activists got hold of it we got around 200 death threats in hours. We have had between 4-5,000 messages, calls, texts and emails.

"It got to the point where staff were in tears and were scared to answer the phone when I thought, 'enough is enough' and pulled the Foie Gras from the menu.

"People coming to eat with us over the weekend are disappointed and I suppose in a way we've let the trolls win but I can't risk the safety of the staff."

You need to understand that there's a distinction between free speech - those vegan activists are entitled to criticise the pub's decision to serve foie gras - and actual harm. And a death threat that results in staff crying and undermines a business that employs people and contributes to the economy is demonstrably harm.

It is time that these mobs of vegan activists were dealt with in the same way we'd deal with a mob trying to prevent a mosque opening or a rampage of activists using threats of violence or rape to close down a feminist blog. Sadly, Norfolk police don't seem to share this view:

A spokesman for Norfolk Police said they were aware but would not investigate further as no direct threats had been made.

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Authenticity and the British curry house - the case for immigrant chefs

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I am, as you all know, not particularly bothered by migration. If I wish to be free to travel where ever, I guess I should allow that same freedom for others. So what follows isn't about the immigration but rather an attempt to get under the existential angst of the British curry house. It seems they might be dying out:

It's often been said that Tikka Masala is the British national dish.

But it might not be for much longer, as figures show two curry houses are closing in Britain each week due to a shortage of chefs.

This crisis is due in part to the retirement of the original wave of immigrants in the 1970s who set up curry houses.

The problem is that the children of South Asian immigrants - perhaps especially the children of those running the takeaways and curry restaurants - really have little interest in working very long hours serving cheap curries to often ungrateful (indeed regularly drunk) customers. They've watched as the older generation worked itself into an early grave, putting up with racism, ignorance and aggression so as to make a half decent living.

The same story went for the traditional (if that's the right word) Chinese takeaway - every town had one but the sons and daughters of the Hong Kong immigrants were just as uninterested in working a 60 hours week of late nights as the sons and daughters of Bangladeshi or Pakistani curry house proprietors. The way in which the business - along with a new generation of Chinese food sellers - has been sustained has been through immigration.

And this is precisely how the Bangladesh Caterers Association frame the problem - they can't recruit people to train here in the UK so need to go to Bangladesh to find the chefs needed to keep the restaurants and takeaways going. All this is happening in a fast food and restaurant market that is changing rapidly - not just with the success of new franchise chains like Nandos but with a new bunch of immigrants from the middle east, from Poland, from Africa and from Southern Europe. Where curry and Chinese had the world to themselves they now compete with Kurds running cafes, polish takeaways and Moroccan/Spanish fusion. Add in Vietnamese, Korean and Greek and there's a real pressure on those existing takeaways and curry houses.

Regardless of the immigration question (and I'd let the chefs in), it strikes me that relying on a stream of new chefs from the other side of the world isn't the most sustainable business model - the Bangladesh Caterers Association might be right about the difficulties in recruiting and training curry chefs here in the UK but this could say more about the job and the conditions than it does about the supply of potential chefs. Indeed, while I'm sure that the mainstream catering business has a good number of immigrant chefs, it's still the case that plenty of British-born people enter into the cheffing business. A business model based on selling cheap takeaway food will struggle where there's upward pressure on wages.

The truth is that, given the proliferation of other takeaways and cheap restaurants (not to mention the street food explosion), there perhaps needs to be a shakeout in the curry house business. The best probably have little to worry about but if a third of the UK's 12,000 or so curry houses closed would it really be a cultural disaster? I can't speak for anywhere other than Bradford but my observation is that, while the 'curry after a night on the lash' market is still there it's far less important than a more regular market including an important market for family dining. And this changes the sort of restaurants - we're less keen on tatty flock wallpaper and cheap photos of the Taj Mahal preferring places that meet the clean, sharp and smart image of other restaurants. But one thing we still demand is authenticity.

Staffing has always been a dilemma for restaurants offering culturally-specific cuisine. It's not that only a Bangladeshi can cook a biryani but that the customer is looking for authenticity - eating a curry cooked by a Polish woman and served by a Latvian waiter feels wrong even if the food is great. And this means that, if we want our rogan josh served by a slightly surly young Asian and our pasta carbonara from a tight-trousered Italian holding an outsized pepper pot, we have a allow people to come to Britain to meet this need (given we know that there aren't enough British-born Asians or Italians to satisfy our demand for authenticity).

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"Ooh, I've etten some stuff!" - eating out should be fun not part of a calorie-controlled diet!

We eat out more than we used to and this is reflected in the proliferation of eateries, restaurants, takeaways and other businesses serving our desire for social eating. And the nannying fussbuckets have had eating out in their sights for some while.

So far the main target has been the fast food takeaway - the chip shop and all its ethnic and creative variations. In particular the nannies hated the big US chains - McDonalds, Burger King, KFC - with their shiny outlets and smart marketing. So when righteous criticism was levelled at the takeaway the references were to these celebrations of greasy American food.

Today the average person (in the UK at least) eats out between one and two times per week and this demand is met mostly by places that offer relatively cheaper food - pubs, curry restaurants, fish and chips, pizza and so forth. It's hard to find how often people go to more fancy restaurants - for many people the answer is never but for others its a special treat. We used to go to (the now sadly closed) Weavers restaurant in Haworth for birthdays, anniversary and as a pre-Christmas treat.

So when we go to these restaurants - for a special occasion, a treat - we're not going to do this:

"Go for wholegrain or wholemeal breads, protein rich foods like lean meats, chicken, eggs and pulses and plenty of fruit and vegetables.

"Be careful with high fat extras like cheese, bacon, sour cream and mayonnaise on burgers, wraps and salads and avoid larger portion sizes.

"Avoid ordering fried sides and sugar sweetened drinks, as this will quickly increase the calorie content of your meal. If you do fancy a fizzy drink then select a diet version. If your meal does not come with vegetables or salad, order some on the side, or ask to swap a higher fat side such as chips for an undressed side salad or fruit bag instead." 

Instead we've going to pig ourselves a little big, drink a little more than normal - have something that is good for us, something the fussbuckets have forgotten about. It's called a 'good time'.

Our rediscovery of eating as a social activity is fantastic as is the fact that so many more of us can afford to do what my parents couldn't do - take their families out for a meal. But, as with all the ways in which our modern consumer society is so much better than the society of our youth, the nannying fussbuckets want to tell us that somehow it'll all end in tears. For these sad folk - who want us to have a 'fruit bag' (whatever that may be) instead of a bowl of lovely chips - everything is a problem. When we're not destroying our health with our enjoyment of life, we're threatening the planet by emitting carbon or some such scientific mumbo jumbo.

The world's po-faced puritans believe that all this pleasure and enjoyment represents a cost to society. They do not care one jot for the benefit we get from eating out, they simply want to nag us about how we're eating too much when we visit the restaurant:

"The message is that eating fast food or out in restaurants should be the exception not the norm as it can be very bad for you. In addition to the extra calories consumed people also ate more sugar, salt and saturated fats than when they are home-made food."

What this ghastly nanny fails to realise is that this is entirely the point - eating out is an indulgence, a joy and a pleasure. At the end of the meal we want to push back the chair, a big grin on our face, and say; "ooh, I've etten some stuff!" And quite frankly nibbling on a few salad leaves while feeling virtuous simply doesn't cut the mustard.

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Ban restaurants!

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They're killing our children with obesity:

In their report, the authors argue that restaurants are clearly responsible for making children less healthy and that government intervention will be required to improve the health effect of restaurants on children: “Public policies that aim to reduce restaurant consumption — such as increasing the relative costs of these purchases; limiting access through zoning, particularly around schools; limiting portion sizes; and limiting exposure to marketing — deserve serious consideration.”

We're not just talking about McDonalds and KFC here folks but all those wonderful little places that you've discovered that are so child-friendly.

These people need stopping. Not the restaurants but the hideous prohibitionists who want to regulate pleasure out of existence. And the funny thing about this is that the sort of people - Shadow Health Spokesman, Andy Burnham springs to mind here - who want to introduce legal limits on salt and fat content don't realise that they'll kill off artisan ice-cream and will force restaurants out of business. They're looking at the easy target of the wicked "food industry" and missing the self-evident fact that lots of those celebrated foodie wonders are every bit and fat and sugar loaded (it is of course the best butter and prized sea salt but it's still salt and fat).

And people have spotting the problem with Burnham's search for a headline:

"Such an approach could paradoxically undermine public health by, in effect, the banning of products that actually contribute to a healthy diet. Whilst a product such as raisins can contribute to one of five-a-day portions of fruit and vegetables, it could be classed as high sugar."

But, of course, the nannying fussbuckets don't care about whether it works or whether their science is accurate. They just want to ban stuff - for the children or worse still:

...to save the NHS money

These people need stopping. There isn't an 'obesity crisis' and children are not being made fat by advertising. These are lies that cover up simple truths - people are fat mostly because they eat too much and exercise too little. But most people aren't obese and most children aren't fat. So let's concentrate on informing, persuading and helping the ones who are fat rather than blaming it on society or corporate greed.

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Is there really a curry crisis?

All right, it's in Keighley!

This is Bradford, Britain’s undisputed curry capital and home to a bewildering range of restaurants serving Asian food. From Prasad’s exceptional vegetarian food through a range of decent quality mid-market curry houses to the classic providers of the mucky curry – the Sweet Centre on Lumb Lane, the Kashmir, the Karachi and the International all within a spit of each other and close to the University for that critical student market.

Yet some people suggest that the business is struggling:

Analyst Peter Backman, of Horizons FS, says that while the restaurant industry has just stopped growing, the Indian restaurant sector is doing even worse, with profits falling. Pat Chapman, founder of the Curry Club, and author of the Good Curry Guide, notes, "You just instinctively know they are struggling", while Backman adds that he is "increasingly gloomy" about the sector's outlook for the next few years, believing Indian restaurants will "continue to lose share to the rest of the eating out market" if the recession continues.

I’m going to take these guys at their word – after all they’re the experts in these matters. The problems, we’re told, are three-fold:

• The Indian restaurant business hasn’t innovated – everywhere we go there’s the same menu, a seemingly endless list of variations on rogan josh, CTM and balti this and that.
• The children of the industry don’t want to work there preferring other jobs with shorter hours and earlier nights
• The government’s immigration policies mean that the tradition of importing chefs from the sub-continent has broken down and there simply aren’t the chefs to fill the hole

It seems to me that there’s another part of the restaurant business that might provide a lesson for the curry house – the Italian. Just as you’re hard pushed to find a High street without an Indian, every place has its share of Italian restaurants. And these restaurants, on the whole, target exactly the same mid-market customers as do the curry houses. Moreover, the Italian developed a consistent offer (usually presented on a menu slightly bigger than a broadsheet newspaper) with a set of familiar dishes that crop up time and time again.

The secret wasn’t exceptional food but consistency, reliability, friendliness and value. And the good ones thrived and survived. Even in a place like Bradford where the curry house is king there are plenty of Italian restaurants. I don’t doubt that, in these tough times, these restaurants are struggling and that some may go to the wall.

For Bradford – curry central (although unlike most other places Bradford’s curry restaurants are mostly Kashmiri-run rather than Bengali-run) means even more of a challenge for restaurants. And the cannier restaurateurs have stopped trying to cram another sleekly-designed place onto Leeds Road. Instead they look to nearby towns – Omar Khan has opened a new restaurant in Skipton and Shipley’s Aagrah has places at Pudsey, on the A64 near York and at Thornbury.

As to innovation there is some – Jaldi Jaldi, Mumtaz’s fast food chain is interesting and creative, for example – but not in the menu. We are stuck with a false search for authenticity:

Ranjit Mathrani, the chief executive of Masala World, which employs 5,000 people and, among others, owns London's Veerasawamy, the country's oldest surviving Indian restaurant, claims the chef shortage has brought the group's expansion up short as surely as the recession.

The company, he points out, could not use "curry college" chefs, because they only allow chefs to cook dishes from their home regions, he says, so they can offer their customers authentic Indian food.

The proper answer to Ranjit’s problem is to remind him that the curry we eat in Britain is the result of an evolution in the dishes brought here from South Asia. What we need is for some more adventurous chefs and a willingness to cut the classic Asian menu down from its choice of fifty or sixty different main courses.

Perhaps a new generation of home grown chefs – needed because we can’t import them from Mirpur or Sylhet any more – will begin to change the menus again. Or maybe the best Asian family restaurants will take the Italian route and eschew innovation in favour of getting the basics right. And, in the end, success will come to the places that set out an offer people like at a price they can afford with service that makes you feel at home.

There isn't a crisis but a little home grown creativity might not go amiss!

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Hiatus...

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In an attempt to regain my sanity I have bought Civilization V - as a result blogging may be light!

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“But in Las Vegas, that would mean serving cactus and sand.”

I just loved this (ever so slightly grumpy) article about locavores by Pavia Rosati, a New York based food and travel writer:

But when your ideals cross the line from practice to pontification, you’ve gone too far. When does that happen? When you send an entrée back to the kitchen because the chef served it with a lemon wedge, and you’re in Chicago. When you spend less time at Sunday brunch hearing about your friends’ Saturday antics and more time raising a silent, judgmental eyebrow at their lack of dietary discipline. Mango juice? How very dare they.

No one can honestly argue that a can of agri-giant corn kernels bathed in goo tastes better than an ear of fresh local corn, but hearing locavores yammer on about it makes me want to wallow in a big vat of corn syrup. 

Entertaining, challenging and balanced - a great article. Do read it!

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