The team

Anjali, Kiran, and the room.

A sister and a brother from three streets away who ended up in the same forty covers: one runs the room, one runs the tandoor, and they argue about the heat scale. Four more in the kitchen, five on the floor on a Saturday, and a driver. The licences and the paperwork are below because a restaurant should be asked for them.

Anjali Mehta

Co-owner. The room, the bookings, the back room, the welcome

Born in Roath, a law degree at Cardiff and six years in a city firm before deciding in 2011 that she would rather run the room her brother cooked for. Anjali runs the floor, takes every private dining booking herself, wrote the menu flags and the heat scale after one too many "is it hot?" conversations, and built the back room out of the old storeroom in 2015. She is the reason the website says what the restaurant will actually do.

Kiran Mehta

Co-owner and head chef. The tandoor, the specials, the Sunday six

Trained in his grandmother's kitchen in Ahmedabad and then in two Birmingham restaurants he still rings for advice, Kiran came back to Cardiff in 2011 with one condition: a charcoal tandoor, not gas. He lights it every afternoon, writes the six specials each season and the Sunday thali each week, cooks the vegan half of the menu as its own cooking rather than as leftovers, and will come out to the table if you ask what is in a dish. He is the four on the heat scale; Anjali is the one.

48dishes on the menu, every one marked for heat and for vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free
14years on Albany Road, in the same room, with the same tandoor
25 minfrom a takeaway order to the bag on the counter, quoted from the clock
4.8average rating

The rest of us, and the paperwork

Who else, and what to ask any restaurant for.

The kitchen

Raj on the tandoor since 2014, who does nothing else on a Saturday; Bea on the curry section, who came from a hotel kitchen in Bath and makes the bases every morning; Dev on starters and breads; and Sam, who washes up, preps the onions and is learning the dal.

The floor

Five part-timers, three of them students from Cathays, every one of them through a tasting of the whole menu and a session on the heat scale and the allergens before their first shift. They know what a three is because they have eaten it.

The paperwork

Premises licence to 11pm; a food hygiene rating of five at the last inspection, on the door; allergen matrix for every dish, printed, at the pass and at the counter; £10 million public liability; and the driver insured for hire and reward, which most takeaways are not.

Where the money goes

The room pays the wages; the takeaway pays the rent; the back room paid for the second tandoor chef; the apps would have taken thirty per cent, so we pay Marcus instead; and the carved screen cost more than the kitchen extraction and we would buy it again.

A chef's round steel spice box on a worn wooden counter: seven small bowls of turmeric, cumin, cardamom, dried chillies and garam masala with saffron threads in the centre

The room

A greengrocer\'s until 2010, a tandoor by the spring of 2011, a back room in 2015.

Kiran found it with the shelving still up and a landlord who wanted a café. The tandoor went in before the tables, because without it there was no point; the aubergine on the walls was Anjali\'s choice and the brass lamps came from a market in Jaipur in two suitcases. The storeroom became the back room in 2015 when the birthday requests reached one a week, and the carved screen arrived from a house in Ahmedabad the same year: "If people cannot see the room is cared for, they will not believe the kitchen is."

Finding us on Albany Road

A table on Albany Road, or a bag on the counter in twenty-five minutes.

Book a table for dinner, the Sunday thali for six or more, or the back room for twenty on one form, with a reply within the hour while the kitchen is open. For a takeaway, the takeaway page quotes the collection time from the clock and takes ten per cent off.

Book a table Order a takeaway