Lord Karan Bilimoria on Green Lanes
Lord Karan Bilimoria
Turkish food has a special reputation on Green Lanes. To find out just how far Green Lanes restaurants have come, the Green Lanes Special Edition spoke to food industry tycoon and Cobra Beer Chairman Lord Karan Bilimoria, who is an ardent supporter of the kebab trade and President of the Confederation of British Industry which is a UK business organization, which in total claims to speak for 190,000 businesses.
Lord Karan who sells Cobra Beer to many Turkish restaurants nationwide is enthusiastic about Harringay as a hotspot for Turkey’s cuisine and in particular the kebab industry. When asked whether he thought Green Lanes is deserving of its crown as “London’s Little Turkey” he said, “Yes, it’s wonderful. London and the UK thirty years ago were the laughing stock of the world when it came to food, it was literally renowned for having awful food. Today what a transformation we’ve seen in Britain and in London, London is now the restaurant capital of the World and London has some of the best, most authentic cuisine from all-over the world and you have areas like China Town, like Brick Lane for curry and of course now Green Lanes for Turkish food and it’s just wonderful to see the flourishing of cuisine from around the world that the British absolutely love.” Referring to this special characteristic of Green Lanes he added that “Harringay is one of those truly iconic areas in London that is a go-to destination that people will go there to experience it, to experience the vibrancy, the buzz.”
“Green Lanes is a centre for the UK kebab industry”
When Lord Karan first started selling Cobra Beer, curry houses were his first targets but he also sees real potential in kebab restaurants. Since then, Cobra has made inroads into the Turkish food sector in the last three years including on Green Lanes, “we started to notice that Turkish restaurants were growing very rapidly and increasing in popularity and they wanted a draft beer and with Cobra Beer, I developed it when I started as the best beer to go with all food including Indian food but to accompany all food,” Lord Karan explained, “when we started approaching Turkish restaurants to stock Cobra on draft it was an instant success, an immediate hit, and now we supply over 300 Turkish restaurants with draft Cobra Beer and they’re doing extremely well … and I see huge potential to expand that hundred into several hundred in the near future …we are really committed to the Turkish food and restaurant industry which we think has got enormous potential in the UK and is only gaining in popularity.”
With the growth of Harringay as London’s Little Turkey in mind, when asked if he thought Turkish cuisine could be as popular as Chinese or Indian food in Britain one day, Lord Karan concluded the interview saying, “This is the wonderful thing about the way that Britain’s love of food has evolved over the last three decades where you now get truly authentic food, the Indian food that you get here in the UK at the really good Indian restaurants is so authentic and high quality that anyone from India would say this is the best Indian food you can get in the world, so that’s right here in the UK. Similarly with Chinese restaurants, similarly with Turkish restaurants and people really appreciate that authenticity and now customers will dine regularly at not just an Indian restaurant but also Chinese restaurants, also Turkish restaurants, it’s part of their repertoire, part of their love of a variety of food and so I think that Turkish restaurants will continue to increase in popularity”.