Veeraswamy is London’s oldest surviving Indian restaurant

In the minds of most Indians who travel to London, there are two kinds of Indian restaurants in the city.

The first kind has nothing much to do with India or even with Indian food for that matter.

 

These restaurants are run by Bangladeshis, most of them from the Sylhet region, and serve a made-up cuisine that no Indian would willingly eat. (I imagine that any self respecting Bangladeshi would also pass out if he had to eat the ‘Madras curry.’) But they have catered to Brits for decades and no matter how much damage they have done to the image of authentic Indian food, the curry house is a much loved British institution.

 

   Then there is a second category of Indian restaurants most of which opened towards the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. These are usually run by restaurateurs from India or by second generation immigrants. These are the excellent restaurants that get the Michelin stars and are associated with famous chefs: Gymkhana, Amaya, Kanishka, Jamavar, etc.

 

   Indians go to the second category and wouldn’t be seen dead in the first category of restaurants.

 

   But there is one restaurant that defies this categorisation and combines history with Michelin starred cuisine. It’s not a curry house. And it’s not one of the smart new trendy restaurants. It is a true original; one of a kind. And now it may well be evicted by the British crown from its home of nearly a century.

 

   Veeraswamy is London’s oldest surviving Indian restaurant. It was established in 1926 when the only Indian restaurants were much more modest enterprises. For instance, a man called Dean Mahomed had opened the Hindustane Curry House in the 19th Century but it did not last very long and Mahomed may be better known as the man who introduced shampoo (the word is a corruption of our ‘champi’) to the British.

 

   There were small Indian restaurants appealing mostly to Indian sailors (many, prophetically enough, from the Sylhet region of East Bengal) but there was nothing that could be classed with the great restaurants of London.

 

   Edward Palmer was an old India hand (it has been suggested that among his ancestors was a Mughal princess) who wanted to serve real (well, Raj-type ‘real’) Indian food to London society. So he opened an upmarket restaurant on Regent Street in London.

 

   It’s not clear why he called the restaurant Veeraswamy (there were various spellings in the early years) but perhaps he worked out that ‘Palmer’s’ did not exactly reek of authenticity for an Indian restaurant. In those days, Raj ladies used to refer to their Indian cooks as ‘Ramaswamy’ regardless of what the poor fellow’s real name was. So it could be that the name was meant to echo that unfortunate tradition.

 

   For whatever reason Palmer kept up the pretence that there was a real Mr Veeraswamy and the restaurant’s recipes were often credited to this mythical person.

 

"Against the odds Veeraswamy became a huge success again, the food improved dramatically and it even won a Michelin star."

   Palmer sold Veeraswamy to a family called the Shepherds and the restaurant flourished hosting such guests as Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and Jawaharlal Nehru. Then, over 40 years after it had opened, Veeraswamy passed into Indian hands. The owners of Mumbai’s Ritz Hotel had a stake; they sold out to other Indians and on it went (mostly downhill) till it became increasingly clear that Veeraswamy was only of historical interest.

 

   As proper Indian restaurants run by good chefs from India opened, Veeraswamy’s food began to seem second rate. Its evocation of the Raj era should have helped it in the 1980s when the Raj suddenly became fashionable again with such films as A Passage to India and hit TV shows like The Jewel In The Crown and The Far Pavilions. But by then, it was too late. The Taj group opened the Bombay Brasserie which cornered that market.

 

   In the mid 1990s the owners of Veeraswamy at the time were on the verge of selling it to a group from Kerala when they received a counter offer from Ranjit and Namita Mathrani. The Mathranis were relative newcomers to the restaurant business. He was a former British civil servant and merchant banker and she was a businessperson whose experience went all the way from banking to fashion. They had opened one restaurant — Chutney Mary on the wrong side of the King’s Road — and, inspired by its unexpected success, were now willing to bet that they could revive Veeraswamy.

 

   Their offer was accepted and they pumped money into the venture renovating the kitchens and using modern technology to ensure that the smell of Indian masalas would never travel to the offices of Victory House where the restaurant is located.

 

   Against the odds Veeraswamy became a huge success again, the food improved dramatically and it even won a Michelin star (which it still retains). Namita’s sister, the legendary hotelier Camellia Punjabi, joined the business and the group now has many restaurants including the Michelin starred Amaya.

 

   The Crown Estate, which owns Victory House was pleased with the revival of Veeraswamy and extended its lease. All went well till recently when Mathrani was told that when the current lease ran out in June it would not be renewed. The decision had nothing to do with Veeraswamy, the Crown Estate said. But it wanted to increase Victory House’s reception area and that meant cutting into the space now occupied by Veeraswamy.

 

   What about the history, the heritage and the fact that the restaurant symbolises one of the few happy outcomes of the Raj: an Indian restaurant started by a Brit at the height of the empire and restored to glory by Mathrani, a Brit of Indian origin who had shown that India and Britain could celebrate a shared heritage?

 

   The Crown Estate had no comment on that but said that Veeraswamy could find a new location somewhere which is a little like saying ‘we will pull down Mumbai’s grand Taj Mahal Hotel but don’t worry, it can reopen in a multi-storey building in Khar.’

 

   Nobody I have spoken to believes that this is about extending the reception area at Victory House. One view is that the Crown Estate will redevelop Victory House as a swish office block and wants to further monetise the Veeraswamy space.

 

   The Mathranis have gone to Court so Veeraswamy is safe for another year at least. But it’s impossible to know how vigorously the Crown Estate will contest the case. Though King Charles gets only a small percentage of the Estate’s vast profits the company — which is self-governing — acts in the name of the sovereign.

 

   And yet it is hard to see how the King who so values history, the Commonwealth and the contributions of Indians to the UK’s multicultural society can be pleased about what is, in the end, an act of historical and cultural vandalism in the pursuit of profit, carried out in his name.

 

   My guess is that wiser counsel will prevail, especially after the uproar in India and the UK. But we will just have to wait and see.