We feared curry.

My parents were more than nervous; I was terrified. Mum’s wee brother had become a curry convert and we were following in his experimental footsteps up an aromatic stair to the Kashmir in Sauchiehall Street. This would have been the late 1960s and the only two restaurants in Glasgow I remember Uncle John enthusing about were the Kashmir and Jamil’s, though The Green Gate in Bank Street would have been operating too. 

Spiciness meant pain, I’d been told. Families like ours, from the industrial heartland of West Central Scotland, had been reared on plain or pan bread, grey mutton pies and Tunnocks’ Caramel Wafers. Industrial food, processed, non-toxic, at least in the short term, and essentially bland. We quaked over whatever a biryani was, pleaded for de-chilified mercy. And what came to our table, was a major anticlimax: kind of sludgy stew with a mild tingle. Dry (non-Ambrosial) rice. I much preferred the exoticism of ‘Chinese’ food: cornflour soup and sweet and sour chicken at the Ho Wah in Shawlands. 

My next encounter with Indian cuisine came in 1971, I think, with a youth fellowship outing to the legendary Shish Mahal in Gibson Street. Spiced onions and chicken biryani changed my life. The explosion of – countless fairly mild – flavours began  a lifelong journey into curryworld that continues to this day. Most recently in Nelson Mandela Place, where the new Glaswegian manifestation of the Dishoom chain has opened. 

I’m pretty certain there was no Tikka Masala at the Shish in 1971, despite the accepted history of that most British of Asian dishes, so championed politically by the late Robin Cook. I was an obsessive grant-funded curryhunter by the time I got to university, scouring Gibson Street for the cheapest  ‘business’ lunches from what was then curry canyon: the Shalimar, the Koh-i-Noor, the Himalaya and the Maharajah were all operating then, with the Green Gate standing guard at Bank Street and the Taj Mahal round in Park Road. You could smell the fenugreek from the other side of Kelvingrove Park. But my recollection is that the first commercial tandoor oven didn’t arrive in Glasgow until at the earliest 1974, when the Gulnar Tandoori opened in Elmbank Street. I remember the consternation with which , having saved the extra cash for what was an expensive outing, we encountered tandoori chicken, tikka and strange, ornate, mild dishes topped with gold foil and hard boiled eggs. And nan bread, great billowing cushions, carpets of the stuff. I ate with missionary kids brought upon the Indian subcontinent and for them this was ceremonial food. But it was quickly absorbed into Glasgow’s  post-pub culinary curryscape. And – I know many will disagree – it wasn’t until after that the chicken tikka masala legend was born in Gibson Street, as some punter found tandoori chicken too dry. Cream (or yoghurt), Heinz tomato soup (or tinned tomatoes), sugar and (Mr) Ali Aslam Ahmed was your uncle up at the Shish.

As it happens, I was in Wolverhampton in 1979 and was taken for lunch to the Tandoor Mahal, reputed to be the home of Britain’s first public tandoor. They served chicken tikka as a starter there, but no masala. It was revelatory. As were the takes on Indian food I experienced in Durban, South Africa. A long way from The Hot Spot’s £1 lunch…

South Asian food has been available in Glasgow for a long time – it’s thought that when deep sea cargo and passenger ships were using the city centre docks, the Broomielaw had several informal ‘slophouses’  supplying national cuisines of many different kinds, including Indian food for Lascar seamen. The Green Gate opened in the 1950s (I had one truly terrible meal there in the 70s) but the first indication of a ‘proper’ Indian restaurant in Glasgow comes from 1938, and I’m grateful to the Lost Glasgow Facebook page and Chris Doak for this information. The handbook for the Empire Exhibition of 1938 has a Mr Bidhu from Nawakhall, in Bengal – resident in Garnethill – advertising his Taj Mahal Restaurant at the end of Newton Terrace, just west of Charing Cross, and not far from the excellent and venerable Shenaz, in Granville Street, still operating today. In 1947 the Taj Mahal moved to Sauchiehall street, to the premises currently occupied by Nice’n’Sleazy.

It’s notable that Mr Bidhu came from Bengal, part of which is now Bangladesh, because the influx of folk from that part of northern India in the 1960s and 70s provided the core of what we now rethink of as The Glasgow curry (“14 pints, a vindaloo and resuscitation at the Royal Infirmary”). But variety, both in geographical origins and style crept in over the decades. Who can forget the haggis pakora, parodied in Iain Banks’s The Steep Approach to Garbadale, but all too real? The offering of superhot ‘tindaloos’ to perforate the guts of even the hardest hard man? And Indian food became big business.

The Ashoka grew from its Argyle Street origins into Charan Gill’s vast  Harlequin catering empire, with various splinters and spin-offs. Including the cool and  experimental Balbir’s in Church Street off Byres road. Balbir Singh Sumal, founder of the Ashoka in Argyle Street (still going) and now proprietor of Balbir’s @ Route 77 down near Kilmarnock, invented the chicken Tikka Chasni, the sweet and sour version of CTM, heavy on the mango chutney. And then we have Monir Mohammed and Mother India, of course, with its café and deli, the arrival (and departure for the south side) round the corner of southern Indian cuisine via the Banana leaf, and more upmarket Merchant City regional cooking via the Dhabba. Meanwhile, Bengali/Glaswegian Friday night special curryshops  proliferated throughout the city, all mutton, onions, tinned tomatoes, Patak’s in catering jars and loads of methi. Outside of Glasgow you went to Edinburgh for veggie stuff (Kalpna) and Dundee for stunning Goan seafood dishes at the absolutely wonderful Gunga Din, alas no longer with us.

The arrival of Dishoom in Glasgow comes with big-money ‘quirky’ branding that strives, mostly with success, for the look and feel  of a 1950s  Bombay-set noir movie. It’s a chain, and the location is slap bang in the middle of the city, near the Apple Store and Queen Street station. The typography used is worth goggling at (inspired by the now- demolished (Typo)Graphical House) in Clyde Street). The food comes in  the much-vaunted tapas-style pioneered in Glasgow at the Wee Curry shop and Mother India’s Café, and the inspiration is supposedly the now-vanished Irani cafes of Bombay/Mumbai; but good grief, it’s dear. And it’s  run like some robotic sci-fi vision, only with real human staff. Who are uniformly pleasant, although the rigidity of the ordering process, and the pressure they are under,  at times seems overwhelming. The place is packed, with bookings stretching weeks ahead. 

Each waiter is armed with a tablet and it tells them exactly when to approach the table for each segment of the dining experience. Our party of four decided to order drinks and food together. Not possible. “I’m sorry I can only take a drinks order until two minutes from now,” replied our waiter. I did like the ‘Scan, pay and slip away’ option on the bill, where a QR code lets you zap the money (including 12.5 per cent service charge) to Dishoom central via your smartphone. How they know you’ve paid as you saunter out the door is another matter. Something to do with micro-implants, probably.

Dishoom serves great cocktails and some imaginative and unusual  beers and wines (including Champagne) remind you how far we’ve come from the Shish’s unlicensed origins 60 year ago, when you sat at long, shared, paper-clad refectory tables, and brought in a six pack of Tennents or McEwens. Or from the squelchy carpets of the old Koh-i-Noor before it fell into the Kelvin (I was there the week before). As for the food at Dishoom? Spicy toasted cheese is a great (and easily reproducible) idea. The curries themselves are small (remember when you first ordered a curry in England, and it came in tiny bowls? Like that) tasty and the nan bread thin and sliced, as was the mutton. No great fatty lumps of sheep. I kind of missed that. 

But it was a special celebration, and a really enjoyable one. The black dahl (as opposed to Dahlia) was great and I plan to try their famous breakfast rolls in due course.But bacon in an Indian restaurant? Come on…

In the end, I’m nostalgic for that sagging Shalimar takeaway plastic bag filled with curry and rice, the vast pyramids of pakora at the 1970s Shish, the first blast of a Lamb Madras after a trip away. And most of all the hot breath of Gibson Street on a summer’s evening, growing stronger and stronger as you crossed Kelvingrove Park. When I was young and hungry. And had learned not to be afraid of spice.