Lasan lookalike

By Paul Fulford on Oct 7, 08 09:17 AM

Imitation, so the saying goes, is the sincerest form of flattery. So I guess Birmingham's superb Lasan restaurant should be very flattered indeed.

I met Lasan's charming and innovative owner Jabbar Khan for lunch yesterday and he told me a fabulous story about a recent trip to India.

He was sitting in Mumbai railway station leafing through a local paper when he came across an advertisement for a local restaurant...carrying a picture of one of Lasan's dishes and describing it as one of the Mumbai restaurant's specialities.

There was no doubting the source of the photograph - it was exactly the same as one featured on Lasan's website.

Jabbar, though, was amused rather than affronted by the plagiarism.

And I guess it says a lot about the standard of Indian food in Birmingham that a Mumbai restaurant should seek to pass off as one of its own a Brum-made dish.

Birmingham: the world's curry capital.