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RED HOT
Settled into a hot metal bowl, somewhere beneath a layer of too-red, creamy but spicy sauce, are seven little pieces of marinated tandoori-grilled chicken that form the quintessence of modern British popular cuisine.

Text: MIKE FINNERTY

If you would have told me five years ago when I moved to London that chicken tikka masala was as native to Great Britain as the royal family - and perhaps more popular - I would have been appropriately dubious. But the facts speak for themselves: 25 million servings of tikka masala are enthusiastically consumed each year; and over the last 10 years, it overtook fish and chips in the battle for the country's hearts and stomachs. In fact, it has become so closely associated with the national identity that a senior cabinet minister dubbed it "Britain's true national dish." Politicians savour the culinary metaphor, latching onto the dish as a symbol of Britain's ability to welcome things foreign and make them their own.

Tikka masala's ancestral roots are squarely Indian, of course. But in a Glaswegian curry house some time between 30 and 50 years ago (there's a debate over its exact provenance), a cunning Scottish-Indian chef extrapolated the British fondness for meat and gravy to a South Asian dish - and chicken tikka masala was born. What's not to like? I discovered that tikka masala is beginning to run up against another British tradition: class distinction.

That's not to say that Britain's upper-class youth snub a pint of lager and a curry. In fact, there's a certain urban chic to the tradition of Indian food after a night down at the pub. No, Britain's new, true national dish is under fire from the very people who invented it: British South Asian chefs, people like Vineet Bhatia, whose restaurant Zaika is one of the stars of a new generation of Indian cuisine.

I found Zaika 10 tube stops and a million miles away from Brick Lane (the most famous string of curry houses in London), on a day when I welcomed any refuge from a bone-soaking London summer downpour. Even before wiping the rain from my face, I knew I wasn't in a standard curry house: no heavy kitchen smells, no leftover odour of cigarette-filled nights seeped into fading patterned wallpaper. Instead, once I'd dried my eyes, I saw exposed wood flooring, fresh white paint and a waiting section overflowing with plump purple pillows. Also missing were the cassette tape of plaintively voiced women singing popular South Asian music and the deferential, mustachioed waiters. But it was only after a quick glance at the menu that I noticed the most glaring difference of all: no chicken tikka masala. "I have never cooked a curry in my life," chef Bhatia boasts with a hint of snobism. "There can be so many flavours in a bite that you don't taste any of them. I try to lighten it, to make it much clearer."

Bhatia's style of cooking is getting attention well beyond Britain. Zaika is one of the first two Indian restaurants in Britain to receive a coveted Michelin star. It is also one of a group of cutting-edge London restaurants that has caused Parisian gastronomes to wring their hands with concern as they watch rival European cities take the lead in the quality and innovation of food preparation.

This epicurean debate is quite a departure from the popular British curry tradition. My last several Indian meals have involved a gang of good friends, raucous laughter and the mass consumption of lager before, during and as long after the meal as liquor permits allow. At Zaika, I was happy to discover that Indian food can cross over to a different kind of night out. This food lends itself to wine and smart cocktails and is served by the new generation of British South Asians with the latest hairstyles, clothes and piercings.

The food is as much a hybrid of British and Indian as good old tikka masala, but in a different way. Chef Bhatia makes full use of the kind of fresh Western ingredients you don't easily find on the subcontinent. The resulting dishes include swordfish poached with spring onion and leaf coriander in a Kashmiri roganjosh sauce with goat cheese and smoked cashew samosas; and grilled Chessingham breast of duck with rich black lentil sauce and masala mashed potatoes.

It is no coincidence that restaurants like this have exploded onto the scene in the same year that British garage music has added Asian riffs to produce No. 1 hits; a film about young British South Asian women who dream about playing soccer has drawn long queues outside cinemas; and theatre impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber has turned the Bollywood-themed West End musical Bombay Dreams into a ticket scalpers' dream come true.

What the British call "Asian culture" is in. But it is nothing people living on the subcontinent would recognize as their own. I've listened to passionate debates among British Asians over whether this new acceptance of their culture is something to celebrate - or whether they should hold out for a more fundamental societal acceptance in the future.

The origins and racial implications of this East-meets-West culinary fusion is something the vast majority of Britons, and adopted Londoners like myself, spend little time contemplating. "We know what we like" seems to be the message, as we fill our supermarket carts with a growing variety of heat-and-serve curries. It was only a matter of time before the long-derided cuisine of the British Isles, yearning for respectability, reached out for inspiration. Although the inspiration comes from India, the result is a hybrid that's as sleek and stylized as Zaika and as common and comfortable as… a bowl of chicken tikka masala.