Chicken Masala

There has been confusion over this dish. Some people have ordered it and expected chicken in Marsala wine. Others cannot imagine what a curry is doing on the Ivy menu in the first place. But why shouldn’t it be? Indian food is as much part of Britain’s trade-borne culinary culture as French food. I call it empire food, not in a pejorative, colonising sense but to evoke an empire of food made unique to Britain by the sea.