In Leeds, Kerala restaurants serve tapioca, fish curry and Indian maps to diners

London’s Veeraswamys may be at risk of closing down, but regional Indian food is thriving. In Leeds, restaurants like Tharavadu, Kayal and Kalpakavadi use maps and television sets to educate customers about the state’s fish curries, thorans and appams

The enthusiastic campaign to keep Veeraswamys on London’s Regent Street open demonstrates Britain’s well-documented passion for Mulligatawny Soup, chicken tikka and vindaloo. The UK’s oldest Indian restaurant, the Michelin-starred Veeraswamy may not reach its centenary next year, because of a lease dispute, however it did start a curry revolution. Moving forward from the stereotypical, and admittedly inauthentic India-inspired baltis and tikkas of the past, regional Indian restaurants are getting increasingly popular. Especially those from Kerala.

Do you know about Virat Kohli’s go-to restaurant when he visits England or plays at the famous Headingley Cricket Ground in the Headingley Stadium complex in Leeds? It’s Tharavadu, a fine-dining restaurant serving authentic Kerala food in the city centre.

Siby Jose, who co-founded Tharavadu with Prakash Mendonca, Ajith Kumar, Rajesh Nair and Manoharan Gopal says that the restaurant, rose to the front burner of fame in September 2014, just a couple of months after its launch. “The Indian team was here for a tournament and they were staying at the Marriott Hotel, just across the road from Tharavadu. MS Dhoni wanted South Indian breakfast for the team. However, the Pakistani chef at the hotel was not familiar with South Indian cuisine. So, we went to the hotel early in the morning with dosa batter and made fresh dosas along with sambhar and chutney for the team,” he recalls.

Soon after, Sanju Samson visited the restaurant, and then Kohli dropped in. Since then, Tharavadu is frequented by the Indian cricket team every time they are play a match in Leeds. The restaurant has also hosted Kohli and Anushka Sharma during 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup and in 2021 India tour of England.

The archetypal Indian restaurant in the UK has always been a place that serves curries in a narrow range of bases — tikka masala, karahi, jalfrezi, balti, vindaloo and so on — forming the bulk of what is popularly known as British-Indian cuisine. Many of these restaurants are also run by people from the Northern half of the Indian subcontinent, mainly from Bangladesh.

Although there are restaurants now, mostly in big cities, that focus on delivering more authentic dishes, most of them focus on Delhi or Punjabi cuisines, or popular street specialties, such as chaat, channa bhatura and vada pav. South Indian restaurants are few and far between, and that includes Sri Lankan restaurants that serve dishes popular in South Indian states as well.

Britain is still largely unfamiliar with the food of Kerala, even though it has a a significant population of people from the state. So, Siby’s and his team have to constantly explain how diverse India is to local customers. “That’s the reason why we have a map of the country here to explain that India is such a big country, and every state has its own style of curries and ingredients,” Siby says, pointing to the big map of India behind him on the wall. Maps of each district in Kerala are also on the walls of Tharavadu.