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Tandoori Restaurant:  Patrick Caulfield:  Household emulsion on canvas
Purchased with assistance from the V&A’s Mueum Purchase Grant Fund 1971

Patrick Caulfield painted Tandoori Restaurant in 1971. It does not show a specific restaurant but is an image of the artist’s idea of what an Indian restaurant looks like. He has put in elements that reminded him of an Indian restaurant and put them together to produce and image that is immediately recognisable.
 
Caulfield was interested in creating images of places or scenes that were familiar parts of everyday life. Some other images he created around this time include hotels, cafes and offices. However, like Tandoori Restaruant, these images have a slightly unsettling quality about them – they are more like images from a furniture catalogue than real places. By painting the image using such hard flat colours and thick black lines, he is making it into a more impersonal symbol of a restaurant. This then allows the viewer to bring their own experience to it by drawing on their own familiarity with Indian restaurants.
 
When this painting was completed, Indian restaurants were becoming a common site on the streets of Britain. Although Indian food had been available in London from the beginning of the 19th Century, it was during the 1950s and 60s that its popularity rose in other parts of Britain. In 1960 there were just 500 Indian restaurants in Britain; this figure had increased dramatically by 2000 to nearly 8,000.

Indian food has become an essential for British people. The restaurants are popular and many people enjoy ‘a good curry’ at least once a week. The most popular dish is probably Chicken Tikka Masala, a dish allegedly created in Birmingham, it accounts for around 15% of choices in restaurants.