Leeds’s Indian cooking starts on one short street by the station

Okra fries are the best-seller at Bundobust: okra in a crisp chickpea batter, dusted with black salt and mango powder, £6.50 a bowl. Next door at Tharavadu, the lamb is cooked the way Kerala’s Christian families cook it at Easter. The two kitchens share a short street, Mill Hill, a couple of minutes from Leeds station, and between them they make the case for how Leeds eats Indian food: by region, and by the dish.

The critics point the same way. Of the restaurants the Good Food Guide lists in Leeds this year, four are Indian, and each has a clear point of view: Keralan, Indian street food with its own beer, Tamil, and a modern room on Otley Road run by a former Gymkhana chef. The city’s only other Bib Gourmand after Bavette is Prashad, a Gujarati vegetarian kitchen on the Bradford side of the boundary. None of them is a generic curry house.

How we chose: Indian kitchens in Leeds named by the Good Food Guide or the Michelin Guide this year, plus one value Keralan room, each priced from its own current menu.

Tharavadu

Order the Adu Cheera Mappas (£20), lamb cooked with spinach in a Kerala sauce, which the menu describes as a staple at Easter in the region. Regulars come back for the meen koottan, a coastal fish curry soured with kokum, eaten with the house paratha, and Virat Kohli, the former India captain, is a confirmed supporter. For a cheaper plate, the extra-large paper masala dosa is £12.50.

Mill Hill, by the station · masala dosa £12.50 · closed Sun, lunch Mon–Fri 12–2 · book

Bundobust

Bundobust began here on Mill Hill in 2014 and has since become a small group with a brewery, but this is still the original. The menu is vegetarian and built for sharing: order the okra fries, then paneer tikka and gobi Manchurian, a sweet and spicy Indo-Chinese cauliflower dish. Two people who can’t decide should take the combo for two at £38.50, which covers six dishes including pav bhaji and tarka dhal with rice.

Mill Hill, by the station · combo for two £38.50 · walk-in, books for groups

Kerala Canteen

On St Peter’s Street, by the bus station, Kerala Canteen serves Keralan cooking as small plates, almost all at £8 or just under. Order the gunpowder potatoes, triple-cooked and tossed in gunpowder spice, and the paneer pepper fry, then a flaky porotta at £3. For something larger, the salmon and green mango curry is £12.50.

St Peter’s Street · small plates £8 · book

Arusuvai

“Kirkstall has finally got a local restaurant of note,” the Good Food Guide wrote of this Tamil kitchen on Commercial Road, which cooks to the “six flavours” of Tamil food and isn’t shy of bottle gourd or lamb’s trotters. The way in is a dosa: plain at £6.85, masala at £8.50, or the Madurai kari dosa with spiced meat at £13.65. At weekends from 9am to noon it runs a South Indian breakfast of idli, vada, dosa and pongal, priced at £10 on its ordering site.

Commercial Road, Kirkstall · masala dosa £8.50 · breakfast Sat–Sun 9–12 · book

Dastaan

Out on Otley Road in Adel, Dastaan is the Leeds sibling of an Epsom restaurant, and its executive chef, Nand Kishor Semwal, came from Gymkhana in London. Start with the spinach and kale bhajiya or pani puri at £6.50, then a pork cheek vindaloo. At weekends the vegetarian thali brunch is £23, and the five-course tasting menu runs from £44.

Otley Road, Adel · pani puri £6.50 · book (£10 deposit for eight or more)

Further out, Prashad in Drighlington is the place for Gujarati vegetarian cooking at its most careful; our piece on the Michelin tables has the order.

Checked October 2026.