Indo-Chinese cuisine pioneer explains why South Asians in Britain like his food so much

Hakkaland is on a busy main street in Harrow, north London. Flanked by Chinese, Indian and European restaurants, it serves the Indo-Chinese style of cooking developed by the Chinese community in India. The style combines Chinese cooking techniques and flavours with Indian ingredients to create recipes that are unfamiliar in Greater China.

The restaurant’s chef, Steven Lee, has never set foot in China. “When I take a holiday, I go home to India. My mum and lots of my friends still live in Kolkata. I am going back there for Lunar New Year in February,” Lee says when we speak earlier this year.

His “Szechuan” dishes are served in a sauce made from ginger, garlic, crushed chilli and tomato ketchup; although cooked in a wok, they are quite different to those found in China’s Sichuan province. His “American Chop Suey” is a mixture of noodles and vegetables in a sweet and sour sauce, topped with a fried egg.

This Chinese diaspora cuisine (also known as Desi-Chinese) is very popular in South Asia, Lee says. “I call it ‘the fish and chips of India’. If Indian people go out to eat, Indo-Chinese is their number one choice of takeaway.” The style of cooking is reputed to owe its existence to a chef known as “Fat Mama”, who sold bowls of delicious chicken rice noodle soup in the Chinatown of what was then called Calcutta.

A group of Indian men enter the Harrow restaurant and greet Lee by name. They have travelled from Kent, a county southeast of London, and are regular customers – happy to make the two-hour journey to enjoy an Indo-Chinese meal.