Staff at Taj Cuisine in Lower Stoke prepare to deliver Indian meal to Congo

by Dan Bloom

We've all had to wait for curries, but few of us have held out for 48 hours.

Thankfully for staff at a Kent takeaway, they had a good excuse for keeping their customers hungry.

The customers were a UN peacekeeping camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo - 5,000 miles away.

Award-winning chef Abul Monsur received the surprise order last week at his Taj Cuisine eatery in Lower Stoke, near Rochester.

Retired Bangladeshi Major Razee ul Islam, who works for a consultancy firm in Switzerland, had seen him on Bangladeshi television and decided he wanted a banquet.

Easy does it... staff carefully carry the precious cargo on board

So he phoned in on behalf of 80 members of the Bangladeshi Air Force based in the war-torn city of Bunia.

In a fax to the restaurant owner, he wrote: “Even though they get a UN food supply, it’s not always possible to find good Bengali cooking.

“Since you are one of the topmost chefs, I would be happy to pay for your services.”

Mr Monsur took up the challenge and now his curries, frozen in plastic trays with dry ice, have been picked up by a helicopter at Rochester Airport.

From there they were destined for Southampton or Bournemouth, followed by a flight to Paris, another to the Congolese capital Kinshasa and finally a transfer to the UN base, which also holds British, Canadian, American and Pakistani troops.

Joining the curries - packed in clear trays so customs officials could inspect them - was Mr Monsur, his restaurant manager Shahed Ahmed and pilot Mustapha Azim.

In chaotic scenes at the airstrip, he tried to phone his wife Eline so she could come, but he ended up leaving without her.

“Honest to God, I’m nervous, I’m excited,” said Mr Monsur, 46. “I thought it was a dream because you don’t get people ringing for that kind of thing.

“It’s quite expensive but the British Army’s there, so I said because they’re doing the nation good I will do a free takeaway. It’s probably worth about £2-3,000.

“We’ve tried to keep the recipes simple and avoid ingredients like prawns because we have to reheat everything. Touch wood, nothing will go wrong.”

Staff get ready for the first leg of the long journey

The curries included classics like chicken tikka masala, chicken korma, chicken jalfrezi, vegetable korai and lamb bhuna.

The chef, who owns a sister restaurant in Walderslade, Chatham, has won awards for his fusion cooking and last summer served soldiers working at the Olympics.

Helicopter pilot Mustapha Azim said: "It's going to take at least 48 hours to get there. It's a bit too far for a curry if you ask me.

"The food should be alright because we have already supplied them with the aircraft containers so they will be frozen and a block of ice when they arrive.

"The conditions are not good. It's started to get cloudy and foggy. I was praying because yesterday was pretty bad and as you know there was and incident with a helicopter so due diligence is required."

Rochester Airport director Paul Britten only found out about the feat 20 minutes before the helicopter arrived.

"It's not every day we get something like this," he said. "It's intriguing. It's probably the most expensive curry I will see go through this place."

Sadly, however, the village takeaway will not snatch the record for the furthest delivery.

That was claimed by Paul Fenech, who took a pizza 12,346 miles from Madrid, Spain, to Wellington, New Zealand, in 2006.