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 Entertainment | Restaurants & Dining | June 2005 
Arriba! Arriba! Britons Becoming Big Mexican Faj-Eaters
 AFP
| A man bites into a taco. Mexican cuisine is on course to replace Chinese as the nation's second favourite ethnic food, as Britons increasingly give noodles the veto and bite into burritos.(Photo: Jorge Uzon/AFP)
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London - Mexican cuisine is on course to replace Chinese as Britain's second favourite ethnic food, market analysts say, as Brits increasingly give noodles the veto and bite into burritos.
Mexican dishes, more suited to snacking and informal eating, are growing in popularity with families and groups of friends while a dearth of Mexican restaurants compared to their rivals is leading Brits to tuck in to tacos in the home.
Britons are steadily spicing up their lives with ethnic foods, it seems, a far cry from the drudgery of more traditional British fare such as boiled beef and mushy peas.
While Indian cuisine is unshakeable in first place at the British table, sales of Mexican food rose 10 percent last year while Chinese food purchases dropped one percent, market analysts TNS said.
Fajitas, tortillas, tacos and chilli con carne are now flying off the shelves almost as quickly as spring rolls, sweet-and-sour sauce and prawn crackers.
Though Indian food remains top among the three ethnic food types, Mexican cuisine sales will overtake Chinese in 2007, TNS revealed.
"Indian and Chinese have been huge favourites with Brits for many years, so perhaps it's not surprising that people are now starting to look elsewhere for a spicy, ethnic fix," said James Beaton, founder of the Mexican grocery brand Discovery Foods.
"Mexican is an exciting, fun and delicious way to prepare food at home," he said.
"Fajitas is the most popular dish, with people loving the touchy-feely aspect of preparing their food and rolling it into a tortilla, while its great for getting the whole family round the dinner table."
"And tortillas and wraps are increasingly the bread of choice for lunchboxes and sandwiches nationwide," he added.
While a multitude of Indian and Chinese restaurants are now a staple feature of almost every British town, Mexican outlets do not have such a foothold.
Britain has a 1.8 percent ethnic Indian population and a 0.4 percent ethnic Chinese population, but Mexicans are rare among Britain's 60 million inhabitants.
"When you look at eating out of home, there's far fewer Mexican restaurants than there are Indian and Chinese. Therefore if people want to eat Mexican, there's less competition as to whether you'll have it in the home," TNS spokeswoman Rachel Argyle told AFP.
"Because there aren't so many Mexican places around, people tend to buy their own ingredients and do it themselves," she added.
Indian foods, like vindaloos, dahls and naan bread dropped by one percent but still command 44 percent of the total market among the three ethnic food styles.
Chinese food commands a 31 percent share, with Mexican cuisine currently taking a quarter of all sales.
The TNS survey looked at the grocery shopping habits of 15,000 British households over a year, but did not include meals from takeaways or restaurants.
The figures were based on the shopping habits of 15,000 households in Britain during the year ending February 27, 2005. |
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