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Gourmet Burget Kitchen’s new advert where they instigated a ‘curry war’ with Indian restaurants has not gone down well.

They told customers to try their ‘proper Indian’ burger which is supposed to outdo traditional curry houses.

In the video, a representative of GBK was filmed trying to deter customers from Asian establishments in a bid to get them to try GBK’s Ruby Murray burger.

People weren’t pleased with the promotional tactics which included wearing a large sandwich board and shouting through the megaphone outside local businesses.


The Ruby Murray burger includes spices, samosa aloo, mango chutney, cucumber raita, and poppadom (Picture: GBK)

The Ruby Murray burger is said to be ‘proper Indian’ as it includes food from the subcontinent such as spices, samosa aloo, mango chutney, cucumber raita, and poppadom, served in a sesame seed bun.



‘Your favourite curry is not authentic. Try a proper Indian’ wrote GBK on their Twitter page.

But people were cringing at the whole thing.

Amid calls for GBK to delete the video, one person wrote: ‘Probably want to take this one down, guys, nobody wants to buy anything from a company that is harassing and attempting to take business away from small business owners. Issue some apologies to those businesses, and try another direction in advertising.’

Others said the video was tone deaf and were shocked it was approved. ‘You seriously need to rethink your public relations and question how diverse your workforce is if you think this is an acceptable campaign. Shocking how this managed to get approved by anyone in your team!’

Whilst another said: ‘Were there any Indian people on the team, or in the room? This is just in poor taste. Aggressive cultural appropriation rather than cultural appreciation. Not a good look.’

One person also said it was orientalist (when western cultures imagine, emphasize, exaggerate and distort Asian and Arab cultures).

Gourmet Burger Kitchen was started by New Zealanders Adam Wills, Greg Driscoll, and Brandon Allen and is overseen by chef Peter Gordon, all of caucasian descent.

They started the chain of burger joints in London, 4,649 miles away from India.

They named it the Ruby Murray burger as curry came to be colloquially known as Ruby Murray thanks to traditional cockney rhyming slang. Ruby Murray was a popular singer from the 50s who was born in Belfast, Ireland, a mere 4,863 miles away from India.

The burger is associated with the curry because of its use of its seasoning and the use of traditional Indian starters and side dishes such as poppadom and mango chutney, plus sesame seed buns. It is not actually a curry.

Proper Indian stuff.

We’ve reached out to Gourmet Burger Kitchen for comment and a spokesperson has said:

‘To all those who have been offended by the Ruby Murray advertising campaign, we humbly apologise. The campaign to launch our latest burger was intended to be humorous. We know that a GBK burger could never truly pass off as an authentic Indian dish. Having read all of your comments and messages, we have made the decision to take down the content. Unreserved apologies again.’



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