Covid Case Study
The Monsoon restaurant facade (2019). Credit: Andrew Walker, Periscope
Above The Monsoon Restaurant (2019). Credit: Andrew Walker, Periscope

The Monsoon

The Monsoon, which opened in 1999, is one of Brick Lane’s most well-known and spacious restaurants.

It has a capacity of 120 people over four storeys and is typically filled with workers from the capital’s pre-eminent financial district, the Square Mile on Friday and Saturday evenings.

The owner was once the manager of The Famous Clifton, opened by Karachi-born Musa Patel, which, in 1967, was the first licensed curry restaurant in Brick Lane. Like other restaurateurs who do not have a takeaway or home or office delivery business, the Covid-19 lockdown has been challenging for the owner of The Monsoon. ‘It’s been very hard,’ he says, ‘despite some good help from the government, you’ve still got lots of costs that aren’t going away – things like rent still have to be paid. The landlord is not going to give it to me for free.’ Even though his restaurant was closed and, in his words, Brick Lane was like a ‘ghost town’ for the periods of lockdown, the owner still visited his business every day. ‘It’s just something I liked to do,’ he explains. ‘I would just come, turn the lights on and sit by myself.’ But there were also practical reasons for keeping an eye on things. ‘The amount of vandalism increased a lot when there weren’t people around,’ he says. ‘My sign was damaged, and I’ve had to repair it. And someone even superglued the lock of the barbershop next door.’

The Monsoon’s personnel have been much reduced, which mirrors shifts in curry demand, which has declined along Brick Lane but increased at Bangladeshi-owned restaurants in other parts of the South-east. As the owner explains:

‘Before the virus I employed 6 people in the kitchen and 5 people front-of-house. Even then, I was struggling; I was seriously understaffed. But now I’ve only got 4 people – 2 in the kitchen and 2 serving. My other staff have gone and I can’t blame them – they’ve found work outside London. Of course, they didn’t want to go because their families live in the area, but the restaurants outside are doing much better than we are.’

COVID Data
Open
Closed
Food &
Drink