Curries had started appearing on the menus of London restaurants since 1773. In the early nineteenth century, community centers for lascars started serving Indian cuisine. Lascars were Indian crews of commercial vessels which had started arriving at the East India Docks which opened in East London. There were about 470 lascars who had jumped ship to seek employment in London and some of them were cooks.
Shortly after, the first proper restaurant exclusively for Indian cuisine opened on Portman Square. Its proprietor was Sake Dean Mahomed, from Patna in Bihar described as ‘a charming Bengali traveller, surgeon, entrepreneur, and captain in the British East India Company’, who established the Hindoostane Dinner and Hooka Smoking Club in 1810. Over time it came to be known as the Hindoostane Coffee House. The British were a coffee-drinking nation before they started drinking tea and it was fashionable to call restaurants coffee houses. Dean Muhammad decorated it in a Colonial style with bamboo chairs and walls full of pictures. The eastern atmosphere was enhanced by offering the ‘Hookha with real Chilm tobacco and Indian dishes of the highest perfection’. It was a popular restaurant and since most people still dined at home it was the first restaurant to offer takeaway. Unfortunately, it ran into financial difficulties and closed down in 1833.
Amongst the early Indian restaurants that became successful in London was ‘Shafi’ which opened in 1920. It was the brainchild of Nora Eileen Cronin, of English-Irish origin, who was married to Dr. Rahim, a surgeon at the Royal Dental Hospital. She wanted to establish an Indian restaurant and her brother-in-law offered to finance it. So she named it after him. When Rahim passed away, Nora continued running the restaurant and subsequently married Sadiq, who was training to be a doctor at Guy’s Hospital. For the next 15 years, she remained the owner of Shafi and entirely managed its affairs.
Shafis opened on Gerrard Street (which is in London’s China Town) and initially catered to the ordinary. In a short time, it became a rendezvous for Indians – visitors, expatriates, and students who had grown in increasing numbers in the inter-war years. By 1931 there were over 1800 Indian students in the UK, a steep increase from only 100 in 1880. For all of those who came from a subcontinent where food and companionship went naturally together, Shafis was like being back home. But it wasn’t only students who frequented the resteraunt. Among its clientele were personalities like Allama Iqbal, the Quaid, and Sir Mian Muhammad Shafi, a well-known Punjabi lawyer and politician. So also were many Indian dignitaries who were invited to attend the Round Table Conferences conducted in the early 1930s. It was also patronized by the English, particularly those who had served in India and relished the flavor of genuine Indian food.
Nora was an excellent hostess, friend, and confidant to everyone who came in whether to eat or just for the company. Even though many of her young customers were well-off, their stipends from India were frequently late. Nora devised a plan to help them without embarrassing them. She placed a large goldfish bowl filled with Five Pound notes outside the men’s lavatory. A notice next to it informed the Indian students that they could take whatever they required and replace it later. This worked like a charm and boosted the popularity of the restaurant. At the end of every month when she counted the money in the bowl, there was always more than what she had put in. With this extra money given to her by appreciative borrowers, she hosted a monthly meal for her regular diners.
Shafis did good business till the Second World War but in 1940, Nora and Sadiq’s house on Talgarth Road, Kensington was hit by German bombers. They were evacuated to Wales where Sadiq became the area doctor and a general practitioner. Shafis was acquired by Dharam Lal Bodua and run by an English manager. Dharam was a close friend of Bahadur who opened The Kohinoor and he managed to run Shafis till the 1950s.
In 1926, Veeraswamy the first high-end Indian restaurant in London opened on Regent Street where it still thrives today. Its founder Edward Palmer who was a retired Indian Army officer belonged to the same Palmer family mentioned in ‘The White Mughals’ by William Dalrymple. Edward’s great-grandfather William Palmer was a general in the East India Company and was married to Begum Fyze Baksh, a Mughal princess. In 1896 he had setup Veeraswamy & Co. in London to promote Indian food products and under the brand name of Nazim, they were sold in many stores and grocers in England. He lectured on Indian cooking and was the catering advisor to the Indian Government at the 1923-24 Wembley Empire Exhibition where he ran the very successful Mughal Pavilion. After being persuaded by friends and acquaintances, he brought staff from India to establish the resteraunt. Veeraswamy was the family name of his grandmother who also shared a passion for Indian food and was part of his inspiration for an interest in the cuisine.It became a popular hangout for Anglo-Indians, retired civil servants, fashionable Londoners, politicians, and royalty, all of whom were drawn by the lavish ambiance, which was inspired by Indian palaces. Some of its patron included Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin and the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII). It remained so popular with the rich and royalty that even Queen Elizabeth II requested the restaurant for a function at Buckingham Palace – the first time Her Majesty requested outside catering. Prince Axel of Denmark had met Edward Palmer during his visit to the Empire Exhibition and when he heard of the opening of Veeraswamy, the Prince paid it a visited, He was so enchanted by its ambience that he presented a case of Carlsberg the royal beer, with orders for a case to be delivered every Christmas. It set a trend of drinking beer with Anglo-Indian cuisine that spread through England. Anglo-Indian cuisine originated in the kitchens of the English serving in India in the late 1700s where cooks began creating Indian dishes like kedgeree, mulligatawny soup, ball curry and fish rissoles, that appealed to English palates of their masters. As more and more British served in India, the interest in Anglo-Indian food in increased and led to the commercialization of curry powder and the publishing of recipes. Mrs. Beeton, the author of Book of Household Management published in 1861 advised the reader that ready-made curry powder bought from any good store is ‘generally speaking far superior, and, taking all things into consideration, frequently more economical’ than freshly grinding the spices at home. She was wrong of course.
While eating houses like Shafis only served unadulterated Indian cuisine, Veeraswamy and a few other resteraunts take credit for introducing the Anglo-Indian cuisine to the British public. Amongst these resteraunts was Dilkush in Windmill Street, The Shalimar on Wardour Street owned by Asif Khan from Punjab, and The Durbar and The Bengal India on Percy Street. There were others on Brick Lane, New Road and Commercial Road. None of these survive today except Halal, which opened on St Marks Street in 1939.
Authors note.
I am grateful to my friend Jan (Johnny) Sadiq a retired PIA pilot for providing firsthand information on Shafis. Nora was his mother and he narrates an interesting incident that occurred in Karachi, after the 1965 War. “I was entertaining my friend, Squadron Leader Shabbir Hussein Syed, at the restaurant of North Western Hotel. He had just been promoted to wing-commander and he was celebrating with my wife and I. The food was superb and we had fine wine with it. The manager personally brought the bill and asked my name. When I told him Jan Sadiq, to my astonishment he asked if I was related to Mrs. Sadiq, who owned the Shafis restaurant in London. I said yes and he embraced me! It turned out that he had been the manager of Shafis, working for my mother. He refused to give me the bill—I could pay he said, but for future meals.”
The author can be contacted on syedali4955@gmail.com
