London - 9 March 2017
1. Various of chef Mohammed-Faizul Haque cooking chicken dish at Taste of India restaurant
2. Various of Haque putting food into hatch and closing it
3. Polish waitress Aga Pozniak opening hatch and taking food out
4. Pozniak serving food at table
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Aga Pozniak, qualified teacher form Lodz in central Poland:
"Now, the situation is not really clear so we don't know what's going to happen in future and what the government negotiations outcome will be like. So now, most people who came here, especially not long ago like me for example, are thinking 'okay should I stay? Should I invest in myself here or maybe should I come back? Maybe I should go somewhere else because I don't really want to come back to my home country, so maybe I should go somewhere else'."
6. Various of customers in curry house
7. Sayem Ahmed, 19-year-old son of owner of Taste of India, in restaurant
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Sayem Ahmed, Son of owner of Taste of India:
"Not only our restaurant, I'd say the industry is in danger and we really need to think of something fast."
9. Celebrity chef and Senior Vice President of Bangladesh Caterers Association UK, Oli Khan, walking
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Oli Khan, Celebrity Chef and Senior Vice President of Bangladesh Caterers Association UK:
"Basically, before the Brexit we had our Brexit minister and then we had (previous) the mayor of London (Boris Johnson). They've actually promised us they said that, you know, 'if you support the Brexit, then we will make sure that we'll get a lot of people from South Asia' and that is not happening actually. Because now they have turned around and are saying something else. The curry houses are not quite happy with this decision."
11. Exterior of Taste of India restaurant
Epsom - 15 March, 2017
12. Romanians and Indian staff in the kitchen at Le Raj Indian restaurant
13. Various of chef chopping vegetables
14. Various of Romanian chef Gheorghe Otel cooking food
15. SOUNDBITE (Romanian) Gheorghe Otel, chef from Romania:
"I would like to become an experienced chef but it takes a long time as it's a busy restaurant but I want to learn. This is a good restaurant with a good name in this country."
16. Various of Otel placing prawns on a plate
17. Restaurant owner Enam Ali in at restaurant counter
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Enam Ali, owner of Le Raj restaurant:
"The British curry industry has wholeheartedly supported Brexit because we feel it would be fair policy and we can bring people from outside the EU, from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan where people can come and look after our business because the industry needs chefs desperately. So this is something now that is happening opposite, because the people we are currently working on - helping hand from the European worker - Romanian and Polish - they are now going to leave so what we end up with is nobody to work for us. So we will be really closing our restaurant. Already we are seeing the indications of two restaurants each week is closing. One hundred thousand people depending on the curry industry and we feel (it is a) really worried time for us."
London - 9 March 2017
19. Various exteriors of curry house
20. SOUNDBITE (English) Theo Turner, Local resident:
"It's not great. I love curry, go and have a curry maybe once every two weeks, something like that, so it is a big part of my life. I love going out with my mates for a curry."
21. Restaurant sign
22. SOUNDBITE (English) Kevin Baker, Local resident:
"In light of Brexit I don't think it's a surprise. I think everybody could have expected that to happen. I think it's going to be sad if they go there, it's a pretty big part of the culture here in London."
23. Exterior of Indian restaurant
Chef Mohammed-Faizul Haque makes it all look so easy.
He adds a ladle of base sauce and then lemon to a pan of sizzling chicken, sending flames shooting skyward.
Then he reaches into a line of vessels at the back of the stove for pinches of cumin, coriander, salt, chili and garlic, the feel of the ingredients between his fingers as his only measure.
After the demonstration, he sends a plate of Balti kuchi chilli chicken upstairs to the dining room at the Taste of India in London.
Haque's deft touch isn't easy to replicate, and that's a big problem for Britain's curry houses, which are shutting down at a rate of two a week, in part because there aren't enough chefs.
Restaurant owners, who backed the campaign to leave the European Union after assurances it would lead to more visas for South Asian cooks, feel betrayed, angry that they helped deliver the vote to only to have the government fail to deliver on promises to help save their industry.
Rather than easing the shortage, Brexit is likely to make the situation worse by cutting off the flow of eastern European workers who have increasingly filled the gaps in recent years.
Brexit is just the latest episode in the curry crisis that is hitting a country where chicken tikka masala is as much the national dish as fish and chips.
In addition to a chef shortage, Britain's 12,000 Indian restaurants are struggling with competition from pre-prepared supermarket meals, delivery companies that demand high fees, and rising food prices.
Though casually referred to as Indian food, most curry houses are run by Bangladeshi immigrants and their offspring who fused South Asian flavours with British tastes to create a new cuisine worth an estimated 4.5 billion pounds (5.6 billion US dollars) to the economy annually.
The unease of the curry houses is replicated in ways large and small across Britain, as Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to begin the legal process of leaving the EU later this month.
May has taken a tough stance on the issue after anger about uncontrolled immigration fuelled last year's vote to leave the EU.
While exiting the bloc will allow Britain to limit European immigration for the first time in 40 years, the government has so far refused to relax the rules for migrants from non-EU countries.
The government also refuses to discuss any changes, arguing it would hurt its negotiating position.
The current rules require migrants from outside the EU to have a job paying at least 35,000 pounds (44,000 US dollars) a year, more than many nurses make in Britain.
Curry houses, which make a profit by selling food at reasonable prices, can't meet that standard.
Restaurant owners have in recent years filled the gap by hiring Eastern Europeans, particularly Poles and Romanians.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 curry house workers are East Europeans out of a total 150,000 across the country.
Aga Pozniak, 38, is a qualified teacher from Lodz in central Poland. Though she now serves customers in front of house at the Taste of India, she started out as a kitchen assistant.
Like many Eastern European workers, she doesn't know how long she'll be able to stay in the UK in a post Article 50 era.
The restaurants, some of which have been in the family for decades, can no longer look to the next generation to fill the gaps.
As mothers and fathers have prospered and become part of British society, many of their children have moved into professions such as law and medicine rather than cooking.
And with no new influx of onion choppers in the pipeline, even those who want to stay in the business are having a tough time.
Sayem Ahmed, for example, wants to transform the Taste of India into a Michelin-starred eatery, and he's studying business at Middlesex University to make that dream come true.
But the 19-year-old is finding himself increasingly pulling shifts at the family restaurant , time that takes him away from his studies.
What is at stake, says Enam Ali, owner of Le Raj in Epsom, is not the heritage of Bangladesh, but the heritage of Britain.
Eastern European workers sometimes have trouble communicating with the chefs, who find themselves learning the Romanian words for green pepper and onion.
Worse still, many have never even seen a curry, unlike previous generations who came from south Asia who at least had passing acquaintance with such food and who often aspired to open curry houses of their own.
But they don't balk at long hours chopping vegetables and washing dishes.
Gheorghe Otel, a chef from Romania working in Ali's kitchen, says he would like to become an experienced chef but adds that it takes time.
Meanwhile, punters now worry about the prospect of the nation's favourite food disappearing from the UK's high streets.
