Recently, for various reasons, I’ve been eating a few more takeaways than normal - either while out visiting friends or enjoying late-night nosh in the newsroom.
As regular readers will by now have realised, I’m pretty much a human dustbin and rarely turn my nose up at anything, but favourites include Indian, Chinese, Thai and of course the hallowed Pizza Hut deliveries that make working a graveyard shift on a Sunday night worthwhile.
But I’ve just stumbled across some research online which suggests that the supermarkets are actually taking business away from local takeaways.
Figures released from The NPD Group Inc, a global information company, show that the UK’s ethnic takeaway outlets and restaurants have suffered a decline of 123 million fewer visits over the past three years.
During the same time period, sales of spicy foods in supermarkets have soared – suggesting that consumers are craving ethnic flavours more and more, but no longer flocking to their local curry house for a fix.
I have to say I’ve never actually tried a supermarket-made curry. I’ve seen them of course, before my supermarket ban came in, on the ready meal aisles – and some of the supermarkets even bag them up to look like real takeaways.
I just looked on the Tesco website and it actually offers what it calls an Indian Takeaway Meal for Two - a brown bag containing three dishes, rice and a naan - just like you’d get from a real Indian takeaway restaurant but costing less than a fiver.
Well I’m sorry, but I’m not buying into it. There are few things nicer than settling down on a Friday night with a proper Indian takeaway and I don’t believe for one second that some supermarket-bought ready meal could compare to it.
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