Topic: Anyone consistently making restaurant-quality dishes w. "the taste"? If so, how?

[Kashmiri Bob]

Even now, British restaurant curry is better than home cooked of course but it’s a bit expensive to fly across the Atlantic for that vindaloo hit I crave….
Robbo

This comment is debatable Robbo. It seems the vast majority of BIR establishments here now are, at best, producing very average dishes, countrywide. Old school curry is a rarity.

Rob

[tempest63]

Even now, British restaurant curry is better than home cooked of course but it’s a bit expensive to fly across the Atlantic for that vindaloo hit I crave…
Robbo

I beg to differ, but we have all but given up on BIR curries and did so a lot of years ago. The inconsistency you can get from one outlet is bad enough, but when you look at any one dish, madras, Dhansak, etc., from a number of restaurants in the same area no two will ever taste the same. And regional differences seem to compound the problem.
I fail to see how someone can replicate a BIR dish at home when there is no consistency as to how they taste in a restaurant?
I would suggest that there was a lot more consistency in taste across the restaurants in the 70’s and early 80’s when Pat Chapman attempted to teach us to capture the taste at home, I’m not sure when Bruce Edwards started on his crusade? I’m pretty sure Bruce Edwards did have an article printed in the Curry Club Magazine back in the day.
We cook traditional style at home so no two curries we prepare ever taste the same when put side by side as they don’t have a common base.
We have friends and relations forever looking for an invite to one of our curryfests, and I know that work colleagues who have had a curry night at ours have told other colleagues how good it is.
If I venture into a BIR these days I will stick to a mixed grill or a platter of starters with chapati or roti to accompany.