GLASGOW! IS! CURRY CAPITAL! 2010! But not for much longer. And like a spicy space shuttle launch, the newly resurgent Curry Capital 2011 competition happens in stages. The first bit involves each competing city choosing a four-strong team of restaurants that will represent it – Glasgow's successful squad last year comprised of Balbir's, Koolba, Mother India and Mr Singh's India. As you probably know, Glasgow has done astonishingly well in the stop-start history of the UK-wide competition, winning the Curry Capital crown a record four times (for a reminder of teams past and how they did, check this old TATTGOC post). In fact, you could say – as we often do when updating our CV – that Glasgow has poppadominated.

So selecting the right squad is an important part of the gameplan, and the closing date for voting for your favourite Glasgow curryhouse is tomorrow, Friday August 26. As an added incentive to include your particulars, there's a nationwide prize draw to win a year's supply of lager and curry (or at least, the modular parts of a curry provided by Patak's). So get on over to the official Glasgow Council Curry Capital 2011 webpage to make your voice heard, assuming they're not too busy craning their necks out the window trying to catch a glimpse of Brad Pitt.


After the votes are worked out, the teams representing each city are scheduled to be announced on Monday September 5, and then there's some other business, including National Curry Week running October 9-15, before the overall winner is announced on November 1. That might make it sound like the Curry Capital of 2011 only has a single calendar month to revel in their tastebud-exploding glory, but we're assured that whoever claims the crown will still be the official Curry Capital during the Olympics 2012. So there's that.
If you haven't participated already, the temptation might be to vote tactically, like in Eurovision (Purivision?). But while it's always tempting to nominate the big beasts of Glasgow's curry realm – yer Mother Indias, yer Balbir's, yer Ashokas, fantastic places all – we would like to gently suggest voting with your heart.

Since day one and the impromptu creation of a mildly perverse mission statement, TATTGOC has been about bustin' out of the curry comfort zone and hunting down some unsung places. So what better way to illustrate the breadth of curry culture in Glasgow than to draw attention to the incredible variety of neighbourhood curryhouses that exist? Let's hear it for the Anarkali, or Cafe Salma, or the original Punjabi, or some other awesome place that we haven't even been to yet. Some place just waiting, out there, cooking up the perfect combination of heat and spice to create the ultimate Glasgow curry. Tucked away yet aching to be found ... calling to TATTGOC with some siren saffron song: inviting, inscrutable, intoxicating ...






(That said, floating voters could do worse than put an "X" next to Shish Mahal.)

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Those English Curry Awards 2011 Winners In Full ...
An Interactive Investigation Into The Inherently Unsatisfying Nature Of Curry-Based Videogames