成人快手

CURRY CHEFS CRISIS

Hot and spicy - a sizzling curry is a British favourite

Going for a curry is a British tradition, but is a shortage of curry chefs is threatening to jeopardise our favourite dining experience.

Restaurants in the East Midlands are struggling to recruit staff, and some are even going as far as India to find chefs. So what does the future hold for our curry houses?

Everyone enjoys a night out at their local Indian restaurant, but could a trip for a curry become a thing of the past?

Indian and Bangladeshi food is a victim of its own success, and it seems that we just can't keep up with demand for a good curry.

Inside Out investigates what the curry crisis means for the East Midlands.

Booming business

The amount of Indian food eaten in Britain is phenomenal. There are around 10,000 restaurants serving more than two million meals every week.

Midlanders can't get enough of quality Indian food

The industry is worth more than 拢2.5 billion a year, but after many years of growth, Britain's Indian restaurants are in crisis.

Leicester's Belgrade Road is famous for its Indian restaurants. And like curry houses everywhere, the problem is how to recruit experienced staff.

Some restaurant owners are even having to fly out to India and Pakistan in order to head-hunt curry chefs.

Tight controls

But looking abroad isn't as simple as it might seem. Under tight immigration rules, work permits for trained chefs from India and Bangladesh are time-limited to three years.

Then there's the added problem that foreign workers need additional training when they arrive in the UK.

The shortage of curry chefs is compounded by the fact that young Asians born in the Midlands are increasingly reluctant to join the profession.

Many Indian and Pakistani children would rather get jobs in other professions than work in the catering industry which is traditionally characterised by long hours and low pay.

This is leaving a skills gap in the kitchen while the demand for Indian food continues to expand.

Curry courses

The shortage of curry chefs is being exacerbated by a lack of training courses in Britain.

Customers are also becoming more sophisticated, demanding higher levels of skills in the kitchen.

Being a curry chef is a highly skilled profession and the training can take several years.

But there simply aren't the training courses available to bring on a new generation of curry chefs.

The only large scale training academy is based in London.

The Academy of Asian Culinary Arts at Thames Valley University launched the UK's first curry course in 1999.

The university offers an National Vocational Qualification in Asian Culinary Arts.

Over the last five years the academy has been producing chefs skilled in the art of preparing a tantalising tikka or the perfect pasanda.

The course has an emphasis on South Asian culinary skills including Indian, Malaysian, Thai and Japanese cuisine.

But more training courses are needed to respond to the shortage.

The Midlands is crying out for catering academies to train new chefs.

There are still 20,000 vacancies to fill, and competition between restaurants for the best chefs is rife.

Curry crisis?

In the short term the curry crisis continues to threaten our favourite national dish.

Curry crisis - can the industry recruit more chefs

Some Indian restaurants are finding that the situation is so grave that they are recruiting staff from non-Asian backgrounds.

Others are calling for the 成人快手 Office to grant specialist chefs from overseas an extended work permit so they can help to combat the problem.

However there are currently no plans for the 成人快手 Office to relax work permits to deal with the issue.

There's real concern that unless restaurants get staff that they need, the authentic quality of the food will suffer.

And many restaurants are also finding it difficult to expand despite increasing demand for their curries.

Recipe for success

There's also another side to the curry business - the retail market.

The massive growth in the sale of chilled curries from supermarkets means that an increasing number of specialist chefs are needed to develop new recipes for retailers.

Indian companies are capitalising on the curry boom

Indian-run companies are also springing up to tackle the demand for high quality supermarket products.

Perween Wasi is one Asian at the forefront of the Indian ready meals market.

Twenty years ago she'd grown dissatisfied with the quality of Indian foods sold in British supermarkets, and decided she could do better.

Perween started S & A Foods in Derby which has now grown into a firm employing 1,300 people with an annual turnover of 拢100 milion.

The company's chef is Pratap Chinna who is responsible for coming up with new recipe ideas for the ready made market.

But even Pratap is not originally from Britain - Perween had to bring him over from India 10 years ago.

Insatiable appetite

With the nation's insatiable appetite for Indian food, there couldn't be a better time to be a curry chef.

But the future of the country's favourite food depends on finding a new generation of chefs to keep up the quality of British made curries.

And new chefs need to be discovered soon if the next generation is to enjoy an authentic curry.