In a quiet residential street in Archway sits a green pub. As soon as you cross its threshold, you’re hit with a rush of spices and smoke emanating from behind a closed wooden door. Behind the door, a set of stairs leads to a massive kitchen where two vats bubble away filled to the brim, one with lamb curry and the other chicken. A cook stirs the vats, great heaving rotations with a spatula a third his size while intoxicating aromas fill the air. This is our introduction to The Great Indian Gastropub.
We sat down with Aman Dhir, its owner and founder to talk about his leap into the restaurant world, the Indian takeaway he launched during Covid, and the passion for cooking that runs in his family.
As we take our seats, waiters emerge from behind the kitchen door bearing trays filled with thalis, onion bhajis, and popadums. They cover the table generously with the deliciously fragrant dishes before disappearing with a curt bow of the head and a smile.
Tristan Benhamou: Aman, you studied medicine, how did you decide to go from there to the food industry?
Aman Dhir: I always had a passion for hospitality, for food and beverage. And after 2 years of studying medicine, I felt, you know what, this is not really for me. I don’t want to study anymore. And then COVID struck, conveniently, a good time for me where I opened my first takeaway [Heera’s Kitchen]. I tested the water and things went successfully there. We then went to open our 1st takeaway in Hackney a year later, and then 2 years later, we opened The Great Indian.
TB: How did you get that passion for food in the first place?
AD: It’s something that’s been passed down for generations. My parents have always cooked. My grandparents being raised in an Indian household, everyone’s kind of got a passion for cooking. My sister’s into baking. My grandparents are into mass producing greens when they come in bulk up and freeze it. I mean, we’ve always been a very culinary-oriented family.
The kitchen that lies under the pub is one of the largest I have seen since working with All Greens. There’s a full tandoor oven in which a chef is cooking naan, several giant bratt pans filled to the brim with various curries. There’s a giant pot over a flame in which the extraordinary dal makhani cooks. Each chef stands at their own station focusing on a sole element of the thalis. We later learn from Aman that the plan is to eventually use the kitchen as a prep-kitchen for their upcoming takeaway expansion as well as for the gastropub itself.
TB: Why choose a pub format as your first brick and mortar restaurant?
AD: In the beginning we weren’t thinking pub, we just wanted a large space where we could produce our food conveniently. We found this location and we thought: what matches better with curry than beer? We kind of put two and two together. That’s how The Great Indian gastropub was formed.
TB: How would you say it’s working for you guys? Because the market for South Asian food, especially in London, is incredibly saturated. How do you guys make a difference? How do you cut through the noise?
AD: Our food isn’t predominantly North Indian, South Indian or anything, we created a journey through India. So, we pick up hero dishes from certain areas. We have specialty chefs who come from those regions. The chef who’s making a South Indian dish is from South India; they know exactly what the flavour profile is supposed to be. They test each ingredient. We go through a very stringent process of testing ingredients, getting samples in, to make one dish, it takes us about a week, to sample it, test it, photograph it, test again, thinking how we can make it better. We’re always doing a lot of research into our food and how we can make it taste the most authentic way possible.
TB: How would you say that your relationship with All Greens and the producers you use affects your creativity when it comes to R&D?
AD: To be honest, the availability of items which are not always available with other suppliers really helps. There are a few items that we use which you can’t readily find available on the market, and All Greens does seem to find them quite easily. And I think the seasonal products that they have to offer as well. We’re always able to update our menus, keep things fresh, with Halloween, we’ve got new dishes coming on, with Christmas, I’m sure, we’ll change again the menu and keep it fresh and keep it with what’s in season now.
As we’re finishing the interview, the main dining room is filling up for the lunch service, Aman offers to send us some of the food we had been observing and seeing them make over the last few hours, thalis promptly arrive at our table, served with an ice-cold pint of Cobra, a lovely way to end a shoot, an interview and a work day.
Want to experience The Great Indian Gastropub for yourself? Reserve a table and explore their menus here.
Photos by Tristan Benhamou.
