Want London curry, contact call centre in India
by Mike Lockey

       London: Many of the orders for curry deliveries in London are, astonishingly, travelling all the way to India and back to Britain before being filled and supplied to customers in the city. It's all down to the internet, because when corporate clients of lastminute.com order food to be brought to them from Cafi Spice Namaste, one of London's best Indian restaurants, the requests are routed through a call centre in Delhi. As Cyrus Todiwala, owner and chef of Cafi Spice Namaste, explained: "My staff had been extremely intrigued by these calls for a while. They try on their American accents with us but we were pretty sure the calls were coming from India. It is amusing that the orders travel nearly 5000 miles to be finally delivered just half a mile away". The meal orders are usually placed by City firms such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and UBS, to name but a few of the denizens of London's financial hub. They place the orders via their lastminute.com corporate accounts and Cyrus Todiwala invoices lastminute.com. So everyone is happy. As he says: "It is a long-winded road for an order to travel, but it works for us. We process hundreds of these deliveries every month". So what are the most commonly ordered items from his menu? Nothing very exotic or unusual it seems: "The all-time favourites remain chicken tikka and tarka dhal", admitted Todiwala.

      Cyrus Todiwala was born in Mumbai and he now runs three restaurants in London along with his wife, Pervin. He was awarded an MBE in 2000 and his passion is to continue creating new dishes using local British produce. His first restaurant, Cafi Spice Namaste, is now celebrating its tenth anniversary and, when he and his staff are not filling those internet orders, from companies a few hundred yards away, that travel first to India and then back to Britain, then he is probably entertaining assorted guests from the media such as Meera Syal and Nina Wadia, who have long been regulars at his restaurant. So, will this curry by internet lark spread throughout the UK? It doesn't seem likely somehow. After all, in Britain, a great proportion of Indian food is eaten after a night in the local pub, so who needs the computer at such a time? In fact, most people wouldn't be in a fit state to use the thing anyway.
-Jan 27, 2006