Curry houses hoping to take away top award
HOT COMPETITION TO BE CROWNED BEST IN ENGLAND
MORE than a dozen of Nottingham’s best-loved curry restaurants are battling it out to be named the best in England.
Businesses from across the city have been nominated as finalists in the 2022 English Curry Awards.
Finalists were chosen by a public vote which will see the winners revealed at a glittering awards ceremony at the Holiday Inn, Birmingham Airport, on Monday, August 22.
The award ceremony has been running for 11 years and was created to celebrate Asian talent across the UK.
The competition can get a little spicy as there is hot competition from restaurants in Leicester, Birmingham and Norwich.
There are also restaurants from Manchester and London battling it out to take the title.
The Nottingham restaurants up for an award are Mewar Haveli Indian (fine dining restaurant of the year); Vi-va Indian Street Food (Street Food restaurant of the year); Lime Indian Takeaway (Chef of the year / East Midlands restaurant of the year); Chaska (East Midlands Restaurant of the Year).
There were some restaurants with multiple nominations, such as Nawaab Saab on Nottingham Road.
The popular restaurant managed to scoop nominations for Chef of the Year, East Midlands Restaurant of the Year and Curry Restaurant of the Year.
This final category saw quite a few Nottingham nominees, with Nawaab Saab, Masala Junction, Mount Gurka Spice, The Bridge and Bayleaf, and the Calcutta Club in the running.
And the Takeaway of the Year was also dominated by Nottingham nominations – such as Rikshaw Urban Kitchen, Karikana Curry Bar, Indian Nights, Spice India and Masala Takeaway.
Rikshaw Urban Kitchen has been nominated in the takeaway category and has already won numerous awards for its mouthwateringly good curries and street food side dishes.
The founder of Rikshaw, Shani Shafiq, brought chefs from Dubai and India to Nottingham to work at the restaurant – including one chef who worked at the Armani hotel.
He said: “We are really excited about the nominations because we’ve always done and won awards before.
“We won the best in East Midlands awards in Birmingham before, and we were a finalist at the takeaway awards in London too.
“Those were really big and Jimmy Carr presented the awards.
“It’s always been exciting to be part of something like this, especially if it’s voted for by the public because it shows we are doing something good.
“It’s overwhelming because we work really hard and it shows that people appreciate what we do behind the scenes.”
When it comes to the Fine Dining category, Mewar Haveli Indian Restaurant was the only Nottingham location to be nominated. The restaurant is situated on Radcliffe Road near Holme Pierrepont.
Owner Raman Pathak said: “It’s really nice to be nominated, which means we must be doing something right. We want to be the winner!”