A recent advert by high street restaurant Gourmet Burger Kitchen has sparked huge backlash on social media, with the Twitteratti calling it insulting to their community and sheer mockery. The clip shows a young white male wearing a sandwich board, shouting “These are curry lies!” and “Authentic my arse!” while standing outside Indian restaurants. While the aim of the campaign was to promote GBK's new Ruby Murray, a “Proper Indian' burger, the advert came out rather prudish. In one section of the promotion, the actor can be heard saying, “Authentic? You're funny. This is a proper Indian”, while another section has him strongly suggesting the burger was better than traditional Bengali cuisine.
The #CurryWars campaign sparked outrage after it was shared online, with critics accusing GBK of missing the mark and offending ethnic minorities. One user tweeted, “Hahaha It’s a white guy from Gourmet Burger Kitchen antagonising small local Indian restaurants. Just super bad marketing. They’re a big chain saying they produce proper Indian food, and trying to define what it is. When it’s not even their culture. Plus they’re being rude”. In just a couple of hours of the clip being shared on social media, people began calling for it to be taken down. Many even described it as “tone deaf”. One person wrote, “Delete this”, while another tweeted, “Then hire more minorities in senior positions so they can inform you when you're being racist bc clearly you can't tell by yourselves.”
The restaurant soon removed all clips of its #CurryWars video campaign, and posted an apologetic statement explaining the clip was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. “To those offended by our Ruby Murray video, we humbly apologise. The video intended to be humorous. We know that a burger could never pass off as an authentic Indian dish. Having read your comments, we've made the decision to take down the content. Unreserved Apologies, GBK.” Michael Carr, chief executive of marketing company You Agency, which helped produce the campaign, said, “Our campaigns have always been rooted in an unwavering belief in the quality of the burgers, and in this instance the joke is in the absurdity that a curry burger could possible compete with genuine Indian cuisine.”
