Restaurant review: Tiffin Room, Leeds

In 2014, Bundobust disrupted the market with its informal Indian street food and craft beer concept. The restaurant’s success has spawned a number of other Indian street food venues including The Cat’s Pyjamas, which has sites in Headingley and the city centre, and Rola Wala, in Trinity Leeds. Now there’s a new kid on the block.

Manchester-based Indian street food chain Tiffin Room has opened its third restaurant in the city centre. The 120-cover restaurant has taken over the building formerly occupied by Wagamama on Greek Street.

Owners Suresh Raje Urs and Srini Sundaram are both from India but met at college on the Isle of Wight and have two other restaurants in Manchester and Cheadle.

Their plan was to bring a taste of India to the streets of Leeds, providing a varied array of traditional dishes from across their home country. The restaurant’s decor has bags of character, a welcome change from the bland interior of the building’s previous occupant.

The architects have included Indian-inspired geometric patterns, colours and feature arches in the restaurant’s design.

The use of reclaimed Indian shutters, wagon wheels and doors adorn the walls to provide hints from its Manchester project; while the lavish scalloped shaped arches aim to give people a vibrant and luxurious dining experience. Diners can choose between sitting in a booth next to the window or at smaller tables in the main body of the restaurant.

The menu covers all the different cuisines of India with dishes like masala dosa, Kerala fish curry and lamb Kashmiri. If you can’t decide what to eat, you can try a ‘thali’, which they describe as a mini buffet on a plate.

It was a Tuesday night when my dining partner and I decided to try Tiffin Room. All the booths were taken so we sat at one of the smaller tables in a corner at the back.

The restaurant has an enticing cocktail menu that we were keen to try but as we were both driving, we opted for a Paani Colada (£5), a non-alcoholic twist on the pina colada, from the ‘Softails’ menu.

It was cool, refreshing and I was so thirsty I ordered another straight away.

The menu is a delightful mix of street food, including puris, kebabs and South Indian Tiffin dishes. There are standard curry dishes, including Butter Chicken, Lamb Kashmiri and Palak Paneer alongside Indio-Chinese sides including fried rice and schezwan noodles.

Our helpful waitress advised us to choose three dishes from the street food section to share as starters and then a curry each as our main course.

After some discussion, we chose the chilli paneer (£5.50), dahi puri (£3.95) and mini idly (£4.25)

The paneer, homemade cottage cheese wok fried the ‘Indio-Chinese way’, was deliciously spicy so I was thankful for the second paani colada.

My friend and I disagreed over the dahi puris. She loved the puff hollow pastry rounds filled with potato and yoghurt. The restaurant recommends popping them in whole for a flavour explosion. However, having recently eaten puris at Hansa’s Gujarati Vegetarian Restaurant on North Street, I was slightly disappointed with Tiffin Room’s version which were a bit bigger, heavier and lacked the same flavour.

We both enjoyed the flavours and texture of the mini idly - coin sized rice and lentil dumplings dipped in sambar, an Indian stew. All the curries come with plain naan or rice.

I chose the jumbo prawn masala and naan bread (£10.60), a Konkan coastal recipe of coconut, red chilli and tamarind. It was satisfyingly tasty with big chunky prawns.

My friend chose the ITR (Indian Tiffin Room) lamb with rice (£9.85)and she enjoyed the combination of flavours.

We were too full for dessert so we decided to have a mint tea each to prolong the evening. However, after trying for about 20 minutes to catch the eye of a member of staff, in the end we decided to just get the bill instead.

While the service started off well, it gradually ground to a halt as the evening wore on and we had to seek out a member of staff to ask for the bill. The total came to a reasonable £49.15 without service. While the ‘softails’ were quite expensive, the rest of the menu was really good value.

The restaurant is family-friendly. There were a couple of families eating while we were there alongside men in suits grabbing a bite to eat and friends catching up. The attraction of this place is that it appeals to a diverse clientele and nobody feels out of place.

I would definitely return. It ticks the boxes as a place to grab a reasonably prices bite to eat with friends, family or work colleagues and the decor makes it a bit more special.

FACTFILE - TIFFIN ROOM, LEEDS

Tiffin Room, Park Row and Greek Street, Leeds

Address: 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD

Telephone: 0113 397 2000

Opening times: Mon-Fri: noon-2.30pm & 5pm-10.30pm, Sat 1pm-10.30pm, Sun (and bank holidays) 1pm-9.30pm

Website: www.indiantiffinroom.com/restaurants/leeds

Email: [email protected]

SCORES

Food 7

Value 9

Atmosphere 8

Service 6