The Travel Critic

I’ve never been a big fan of cliché. But, as fate would have it, on a sodden Friday night in Bristol, I found myself stumbling around the city centre with three other men of a certain vintage doing exactly that. Four middle-aged blokes looking for a curry house after one too many pints. It was like a scene from a mid-90s ITV sitcom nobody asked for.

We’d actually booked another curry house—one of those joints with a name like “Royal Old India Garden of Saffron Fusion” or something equally ludicrous. But upon arrival, we found it shuttered. Permanently, as it turned out. Possibly dodging a bullet there, though the bullet had already been loaded by the third pint.

And so, disorientated and feeling more than a little Alan Partridge, we staggered around the corner and—there it was—the bright, gaudy, frankly irresistible neon of Urban Tandoor. The name rang a faint, social media-shaped bell in the booze-addled recesses of my brain, mostly thanks to those brilliantly silly viral videos they pump out online. Proof, if ever you needed it, that a TikTok video and a catchy song is all it takes to drag four grown men into your restaurant.

Inside, it was heaving. Utter carnage. But the staff, slick and smiling, found us a table with the efficiency of a NATO airlift. Four pints of lager appeared almost as quickly as we sat down—because of course. And when they asked us, a few gulps in, if we wouldn’t mind shifting to another table to make space for a larger group, well, I almost admired the chutzpah. We moved without protest. This is the modern world. Agile dining.

Now, I’ll admit the details start to blur after this point (there’s a reason food critics usually eat sober), but I do remember that the menu was refreshingly un-clapped-out. None of your chicken tikka masala and fluorescent korma clichés. Instead, I lazily asked our waiter—who had the reassuring air of a man who knows exactly what’s good and exactly what’s not—to decide for me. He brought me lamb. Something wonderfully spiced and gorgeously unctuous. It was superb. That much I remember. Probably the only thing I remember.

The night, inevitably, rolled on to yet another bar round the corner where, after another nightcap or three, I realised I’d left my sunglasses back at Urban Tandoor. I staggered back, full of curry and self-loathing, only to find the staff standing there, smiling, sunglasses in hand. Like they knew. Like they always know.

Urban Tandoor is not your dad’s curry house. It’s not your dad’s dad’s curry house. It’s a living, breathing example of how Indian food in Britain has thrown off its old-school curry house shackles and become something brighter, spicier, cleverer and—yes—better. Great food, impeccable service, and a sense of humour about it all.

And the next morning, even with the dull throb of lager, I knew: it wasn’t just the hype. It’s the real deal.