Save the balti: Can Birmingham's best dish come back from the brink?

'Curry might have come from India, but balti was born in Birmingham,' says Zaf Hussain. His family business, Shababs, has been on Ladypool Road since 1987, one of the last restaurants in the city still making what Hussain calls the authentic balti: cooked in a steel bowl on a high heat and served straight away, sizzling on the table.

He warns that many places 'say they do balti' but actually cook in a frying pan before dumping it into a bowl, while the name has become a catch-all for curry-flavoured snacks and bottled sauces. In Shababs' kitchen Hussain fries onion, chopped tomatoes and garlic in a blackened carbon-steel balti bowl, adds a ladle of tomato gravy that has been bubbling since the previous evening, then stirs in raw chicken and spices.

Flames lick the bowl, the mixture boils violently, and seven minutes later it is pulled from the burner and served on a heatproof dish.

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