Thanks to Curryspondents, Doug (welcome) and Neil, I was made well aware last weekend of the reporting of Fake Curry.
The Sunday Mail had the headline that of the Curry served in Scotland, 1 in 3 are (sic) fake. They quoted a secret report done by food watchdogs who had found 46 instances of Beef impersonating the twice as expensive Lamb in 129 restaurants tested. OK, that may well work out around the one in three mark, but come on… we Chaps know that the Ladies tend towards Chicken, and then there are those who miss out on Meat altogether. One in three is fake? – No chance!
STV covered the story in their news bulletins too, but neither branch of the Media would name names. Given how public the Horse-meat Scandal (Has anyone ever had Horse Curry?) has been and all the Supermarkets and Brands named, how is that not a single purveyor of Fake Curry was named?
Hector has had his suspicions for some time that this was going on. I have questioned what I was eating in this Blog a few times, the Meat being far too Fibrous for Lamb and having a Columnar Structure more associated with Beef. Somewhere in the Curry-Heute Curry Reviews are places I shall name, as soon as I find them.
This may mean going back and reading every report in order… a Search revealed only one possible Scottish Candidates, in Helensburgh, a Favourite Venue which has since changed hands. I may have written more…
I’ve read the full report. They did not test chicken dishes only those supposedly containing lamb. Of the 129 ” lamb”dishes tested 33 contained only beef and a further 13 were a mixture of lamb and beef. Therefore indeed around 30% were not as described and the restaurants are defrauding their customers. In 2011 in Clackmannanshire Food Inspectors found that 10 out of 14 lamb curries tested actually contained beef in various proportions. In 2010 in Falkirk 75% of takeaway lamb curries were in fact made of beef. Enough said eh. This has been going on for years and it is why some of my friends will only eat chicken curry ( I can hear Hector groan as I write this piece ). The guilty restaurants should be named and shamed by the enforcing authorities.
Hector replies:
Why the guilty venues are not being named is suspicious… too many Big Names? As you say, this is fraud.
…as for Chicken, well, em, tales of a frozen Alsatian found in what was my favourite Curry House in Cochrane St in the 1970s…. I did have Kentucky Fried Rat once …