Birmingham gave Britain the balti. Where to eat one in the Triangle now

At Shababs on Ladypool Road a balti goes into a thin, pressed carbon-steel bowl made in Birmingham, cooks fast over a high flame, and comes to the table in the same bowl you watched it cook in. That is the dish, more or less. A balti is defined less by a recipe than by the pan and the speed, and the speed was the point: it let small rooms feed a lot of people quickly.

Where it came from

Kashmiri and Pakistani families settled in Sparkhill, Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath through the 1950s and 1960s, and in the 1970s Mohammed Arif, owner of Adil’s on Stoney Lane, began cooking and selling curry in flat-bottomed steel pans with handles, built to take a fierce heat. Adil’s is generally credited with first using the word on a menu, in 1977. By the 1990s, Visit Birmingham counts 20 to 30 balti houses in the streets now called the Balti Triangle: Ladypool Road, Stoney Lane and Stratford Road.

The best footnote in the story is what happened when the city tried to protect the dish. In 2012 the Birmingham Balti Association applied for EU Traditional Speciality Guaranteed status. By 2016 the bid had failed, because the restaurants could not agree on a standard recipe. A second attempt is going better: a newer balti protection group, APAB, has passed the first stage of an application to a UNESCO trail of intangible cultural heritage.

Where to eat it now

Shababs

The Hussain family has served baltis on Ladypool Road since 1987, when the room had 33 seats, no knives or forks on the tables, and a starter and main cost £3 between them. It grew to 90 seats in 1992 and has since taken the shops on either side. Zaf Hussain runs it now, after his father and brother, and the website carries a tribute to the founder, Matloob Hussain. It has also reopened after a fire. Order a balti and a table naan and eat with the bread, as the first customers had to. The house sells its own Birmingham-made balti bowls and spice kits if you want to try the fast, high-flame method at home, and it will send a chef to cook baltis for parties of up to 50.

Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook · open daily from noon until late · book online

Milan Sweet Centre

Pudding is a short walk away on Stoney Lane. Milan has made vegetarian Indian food and sweets on Stoney Lane for more than four decades, and the sweets are made on site every day: ras malai, jalebi, gajar halwa with ice cream, kulfi and several kinds of barfi and ladoo. Take a box of jalebi away if the tables are full; spaces are limited and the shop asks you to ring ahead to eat in.

Stoney Lane, Sparkbrook · open daily 9am–8pm · call to book a table

Which first

Start at Shababs, because it is the house that has cooked the Birmingham way, in the bowl, on the same road, since 1987, and it opens every day from noon. Finish at Milan.

Checked October 2026.