Balti Lessons!

Last week, I talked to some students at Queensbridge School about the history of Balti as part of their excellent project highlighting all things Birmingham. It was great to see Balti featuring in their poetry highlighting their love for their City …. definitely some budding poets and artists and a credit to their School!

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A balti Blank!

Interesting to note that the recent English Curry Awards 2022 held in Birmingham didn’t feature one genuine Balti restaurant. It’s also a fair bet that all the award winners were of Bangladeshi rather than Pakistani derivation. It would be interesting to find out whether the organisers even knew what was an authentic Balti!

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BBC VISIT BALTI TRIANGLE

In preparation for the opening of the Commonwealth Games, BBC Sports visited the Triangle and were taken to a few shops to get a feel for this unique part of the city. As one would expect they visited the iconic Shababs to both film and taste a proper Brummie Balti. Other stops included Raja Bros […]

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Bronze for Balti

The Daily Mail recently published an article on the top 40 destinations to visit in the UK. Pleasingly balti was third but yet again the photo of a  normal curry serving plate didnt do Birmingham’s iconic dish any justice. Revealed: The 40 UK travel experiences to try before you turn 40, with stargazing in Northumberland No.1 […]

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Balti Blasphemy (Again)

For Fathers’ Day, my daughter thoughtfully bought me an interesting little book called ‘The Philosophy of Curry’ about the history of curry by Sejal Sukhadwala who apparently is a regular contributor to the Guardian Time Out and BBC Food. Furthermore, her book comes with a testimonial from the gushing Nigella Lawson who further gushes ‘a […]

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No ‘Depth’ to Holly wood

There’s been a lot of publicity over Johnny Depp and his crew splashing out a supposed £50,000 on a ‘do’ at Broad Street’s Varanasi. Not sure who his adviser was but he could have had a real taste of Brum by buying 5,000 proper baltis with a naan bread as an accompaniment or perhaps more […]

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Britain’s Top Takeaways

In this TV series, the vacuous Sarah Cox presents a competition which recently featured ‘Indian’ takeaways from different parts of the country … Edinburgh, Bradford (billed as the curry capital!), London and Newcastle. Notice the usual big city name missing and to rub it in the groups of diners judging were Manchester based. The one consolation is that […]

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Balti Buffs!

Misty Ricardo and Andy Lees This week saw a gathering of curry royalty at Shababs, in the form of Richard Sayce aka curry author Misty Ricardo and Andy Lees who set up the highly successful Facebook page ‘The Balti Club ‘with a multitude of loyal followers. They were given access to the kitchen and under […]

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A Brummie Balti Birthright?

The quest to preserve the authentic Balti and to educate the public, particularly those born in the noughties onwards, goes on. Balti Bowl In adding a chapter to a proposed new reprint of my book ‘Going for a Balti’, I commissioned a survey amongst Brummies about their awareness of the authentic dish. Alarmingly, less than […]

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