Here in the UK, we have Indian restaurants in pretty much every town in the country. However, I’ve heard that the US has far fewer despite having over twice as many Indian origin residents. My family in the US said that it can be difficult to find even a single indian restaurant sometimes. Why is this? It’s a shame, because you are missing out on arguably the world’s best cuisine.
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In the UK, you are relatively limited in your options. In the US, Indian food is one of several dozen options in my area.
Because Indians in the United States tend to live in their own “bubbles” if that makes sense. The ones that live over here have large families and mingle together. I’m not saying that they don’t interact with other people, it’s just that they tend to do their cultural activities in private.
Indian Americans are also typically affluent. If you live in a small town chances are the Indians in said town are surgeons at the hospital making $400,000 a year. So economically opening a restaurant is not what they do in our society.
We never owned India and most Indian immigrants are very recent comparatively.
It’s just as much a question of “why is Indian cuisine so popular in the UK?”. If you’re British, you should know that. If you’re not British, it’s colonialism. The answer is colonialism.
I’ve got multiple Indian joints close enough that Uber Eats will deliver.
Because we have a lot fewer Indian people proportionally – both compared to population and geographically.
The UK is very small relative to most of the US – Great Britain is half the size of California – and much more densely populated.
>However, I’ve heard that the US has far fewer despite having over twice as many Indian origin residents.
We have five times your total population as well though. East Indians are relatively rarer. I’m also not sure about the geographic distribution in both countries, but I’d imagine in places with more Indians we’d see more Indian restaurants, which is still a relatively small amount of the country (we have about 36 times your land area). I definitely saw more Indian curry places on the west coast than other places, though Thai curry seems more evenly distributed
Smaller Indian diaspora here for one – and the people that do immigrate here tend to be professional tech workers. We never had the Raj you know?
That said where I live there are a ton of Indian restaurants and they’re very good
This is maybe regional within the US and depends on how many Indians live in the local area. In my city, there are dozens of Indian places. And good ones, too. It is pretty popular.
I live in damn Alaska (granted, in the big city) and we have multiple Indian/south Asian restaurants.
Depending on how you look at it, the niche that Indian food occupies in British culture went to either Chinese or Mexican food.
Also, as a quirk of how Indian immigration worked in the US, compared to Britain, a larger proportion of Indian immigrants were already fairly well off financially when they got here- to the degree that working in or even opening a restaurant would represent a step *down*.
Also… as noted, the Empire.( see also: “Why is it easier to find Jamaican food in Britain, even though we’re physically closer to Jamaica?”)
We didn’t colonize India.
You can’t be this ignorant can you?
Indians are a recent immigrant here. That food is wildly popular here in New Jersey where we have a massive Indian population.
Because there were not many Indians in the US back then. Now there are a lot
>despite having over twice as many Indian origin residents.
Assuming that statistic is accurate, there are five times as many people living in the US compared to the UK, meaning that people of Indian origin would proportionately make up less than half the percentage of the US population as the UK population.
Also, as others have noted, the US isn’t as culturally close to India as the UK is because we don’t have that colonial connection.
Same reason y’all don’t have Mexican food
Huge country so way way way more spread out. Britain is the size of California. So that many Indians it leaves way less per space
No we’re not. I live in a big city and there’s like 3 or 4 Indian restaurants that I can walk to. Why is Mexican and Salvadoran food less popular in the UK?
Immigrants from South Asia are relatively recent in coming to the United States, plus the early wave of South Asian immigrants tended to be highly educated professionals (i.e. doctors).
Chinese food is far more ubiquitous in the United States because we’ve had immigration from Japan and China for over a hundred years (many Japanese restaurants were taken over by the Chinese during WWII because of internment).
Any decently-sized American city would have plenty of Indian food options, but it’s not a go-to cuisine due to the variety of what you can find in the US. Also, Mexican food tends to fill that niche for much of America if you want something that’s spicy and eaten with some type of flat bread and rice.
Because we have Mexican food. 🙂 I tease.
I have never had Indian food more flavorful than quality Mexican food. Many Indians I know also love some good Mexican. Yes it is different but the flavor profile fulfils that need for ‘exotic’ cuisine.
So, quick search has UK having about [12,000](https://nibblematrix.com/how-many-indian-restaurants-in-the-uk-2682#:~:text=The%20Best%20Answer%20To%20The%20Question%20%C2%ABHow%20many,are%20around%2012%2C000%20Indian%20restaurants%20in%20the%20UK.)
US has about [80,000](https://nibblematrix.com/how-many-indian-restaurants-in-usa-1123#:~:text=The%20Best%20Answer%20To%20The%20Question%20%C2%ABHow%20many,around%2080%2C000%20Indian%20Restaurants%20in%20the%20United%20States%21)
So, I don’t think we are lacking Indian food.
This question is crazyyyyy lol.
The UK colonized, subjugated, and controlled India for almost 100 years.
At least in my experience, the same is generally true in the US. I’ve never been to even a relatively small town without at least one Indian restaurant. Any city is going to have a pretty large number and you’ll probably be able to find at least two different regional cuisines. There may be fewer restaurants, but it’s not like it’s hard to find Indian food in the US. I think your family in the US may be the exception rather than the rule.
The US has 5x more overall population but only a 2x more Indian immigrants. So the density of Indian immigrants is lower.
Also I feel like there’s way more competition for ethnic food in the US than in the UK. Mexican food is king in the US w/ Chinese food having a pretty big foothold (it’s a complicated history). There’s just not a lot of room for Indian food outside of places w/ a strong Indian presence.
We didn’t colonize India.
The US never colonized India.
Same question about kebab shops. There’s one on every corner in Europe, but I’ve never seen one in the US
Is this a joke? You all subjugated India for over a hundred years, of course you will have bigger ties to India. Do you not learn about all of the UKs colonialism or something?
The same cultural niche filled by Indian food in the UK is filled by Mexican (due to proximity) or Chinese food (due to weird immigration law loopholes). Also going to throw Italian into the mix. Large amount of Indian immigration are relatively recent here, and we don’t have colonial history in that region.
We’re next to Mexico and have more Mexicans than Indians in a concentrated city or region
We have it but nobody said it’s the best and that we’re missing out. We could say the same about you missing out on real Mexican food.
I’m a dual US/UK citizen and I miss Mexican food when I leave the US more than I miss Indian food when I leave the UK…. It’s just what you’re used to that you value tbh.
I’m in LA and we have tons of Indian food though, I love it!!
No, probably not as popular given the US and India have a very different relationship than the UK and India.
I’d assume Indian food in the UK is like Mexican food here? Although we do have Indian food and a lot of it is great. From my understanding Mexican food (or at least decent Mexican food) doesn’t exist in the UK.
There are parts of the US where Indian restaurants are common, but they aren’t distributed evenly. For example, when I lived in Washington DC, I could walk to 3 Indian restaurants within 15 minutes of where I lived. I’m in rural Vermont now, and the closest Indian place I know of is a 90 minute drive away in New Hampshire.
Second, Indian immigrants to the US tend to arrive with highly skilled professions, like medicine, sciences, engineering and IT. These aren’t the type of people who tend to open restaurants featuring the food of their homeland.
Indian food is generally popular in the US, it just isn’t as ubiquitous as Mexican, Chinese, Italian or even Thai.
I live in a tiny town no one has ever heard of and we have a bomb ass Indian place. Indian food has been readily available to me my whole life.
Proximity. Think Mexican food in us
Indian food is to Brits what Mexican food is to Americans.
I’ve noticed indian food is becoming more popular here though especially with the younger crowd. My parents who are otherwise reasonably open minded still refuse to try it though lol
And just saying ive heard that our indian food is better than your mexican food so…
Why is Mexican food so much less popular in the UK than the US?
There’s just so many choices. Around here, ahead of Indian (in terms of number of restaurants around here) are Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, then maybe Indian tied with Vietnamese and Greek but ahead of Lebanese, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Salvadorian, etc.
Because India was never an mm U S colony. However, because of our closeness, we have Mexican food which serves the exact same purpose as a “curry”.
Just spitballing here…
It is possible that the long, intertwined history of Britain and India led to a hybridization of Indian food in the UK to make it more appealing to the British palate. I know some go-to Indian foods in the UK actually have roots in the UK. That is exactly what happened with Chinese food in the US (pro tip – don’t order General Tso’s Chicken in Beijing)
Most Indian restaurants I’ve seen in the US have only been here for a 20 years or less. They were founded in an era when cultural authenticity is more valued. The more authentic Indian food may be a bit too adventurous for mass market popularity.
Why do you not have many Mexican restaurants?
Hey, quick question (that I’m sure will clear everything up): Which country colonized India, the US or the UK?
Mexican food dominates the spicy niche. The U.S. has way more Mexican immigrants than Canada, where I live, which has a pretty sizable South Asian diaspora. Unsurprisingly, Indian restaurants are super common here. Not as common as Mexican restaurants in the U.S., but common.
Same thing with the U.K., but even more so.
We already have the best cuisine, it’s called Asian and mexican food.
Your country(s) are the size of one state. We have fifty of them, yet only twice the number of Indians as you. Your question, regardless of the many good reasons other people have stated, answers itself.
It’s a common enough cuisine that you can find good Indian restaurants in pretty much every city, no matter how small. There’s close to 8,000 Indian restaurants in America… which, yes – is about as many as the UK has. So… proportionally, about 1/5 the number. Less, but I’m not sure if it’s *niche*.
You have to remember the UK’s own immigration and colonization history in India, which opened the door to large waves of newcomers to the UK from all walks of life.
The US’s Indian community is comparatively modern and we don’t have the same history. Most come on merit/talent-based immigration visas – so Indians are more likely to be engineers, doctors and IT workers than restaurantuers.
As a result, curries never became a staple food in the same way it has in the UK. You don’t find it as a common pub food unless it’s a British/Irish pub.
It may be fair to say that America’s equivalent would be Mexican food. Tacos are absolutely ubiquitous here. And like you have curry nights, we have Taco Tuesdays or whatever.
Though, I hear that Taco Tuesday is a big thing in Norway (as Taco Friday).
Mexican food is our Indian food
This greatly depends on where you are in America. It’s illogical to compare a teeny tiny country to a continent-sized country like the U.S., which has a lot of immigration in its history. In big/major cities, you won’t have any trouble finding Indian restaurants. If you’re out in the middle of nowhere, you could have trouble finding *anything*.