Your Daily Star presented Veeraswamy’s staff with a commemorative front page to mark the restaurant’s historic place in British culture
The birthplace of beer and curry had one hell of a 100th birthday – thanks to the Daily Star. We popped along to the Veeraswamy’s centenary celebrations to present staff with a framed commemorative front page to mark its historic place in British culture.
The UK’s first Indian restaurant faces being shut down and turned into offices. Your favourite newspaper has united with 20,000 diners, history buffs and celebrity chefs from around the world in a campaign to keep it currying on.
The restaurant introduced the nation’s No1 favourite food to Blighty and boasted Mahatma Gandhi as one of its first customers. His great-grandson Tushar, head of the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation in India, is among those battling to save it.
It carried on dishing up grub to Londoners as bombs dropped in the Blitz and celebrity fans included Sir Winston Churchill and The Godfather actor Marlon Brando. Most importantly it started the Brit tradition of washing down a curry with lager.
Prince Axel of Denmark liked to drink Carlsberg at the restaurant in the 1920s – triggering a century-long trait. We told last month how the restaurant faces closure because its landlord the Crown Estate wants to convert the building into offices to maximise revenue for Rachel Reeves.
A petition has been presented to King Charles III in a bid he will intervene to keep it cooking. Its birthday bash featured a host of VIP guests, an army of drummers and a mouth-watering menu including Mulligatawny soup from a 1926 recipe, Chicken Supreme Mumtazi and a caramelised banana kulfi with banana fritters.
Restaurant boss Ranjit Mathrani said not renewing its Regent Street lease was ‘short-sighted’ and ‘100 years of history is being relegated to the dustbin’. He said: “The Crown Estate are like a brick wall covered with polystyrene politeness.”
His wife Namita said: “Veeraswamy have catered twice at Buckingham Palace for the late Queen. The first time was in 2009 when the president of India visited – secondly in 2017 when India celebrated her 70th year of independence. It is astonishing that we are being asked to close after all of this.
“Along with Hamleys and Liberty we are the oldest tenants on Regent Street.”
A spokesman for The Crown Estate told the Daily Star it needs to carry out a ‘comprehensive refurbishment’ of the building housing the restaurant to ‘bring it up to modern standards and into full use’. They said they ‘understand how disappointing this is’ and have ‘offered help to find new premises on our portfolio so that the restaurant can stay in the West End as well as financial compensation’.
But they added: “The Crown Estate has a statutory responsibility to manage its land and property to create long term value for the UK and return its profit to the UK Government for public spending. This is not a decision we’ve taken lightly.
“Unfortunately there isn’t an alternate scheme which meets our responsibilities as stewards of this heritage listed building, our legal obligations and our responsibilities to manage public money.”
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters .