Cooked one of my favourite teas tonight - the lamb burryani, out the Shish Mahal cookbook (my copy is so old and food bespattered that I could boil it up and make a good masala)

Thread...

I has my first curry, aged about seven, in the old Shish, in Gibson Street.
Here's 'Mr Ali' (Ali Ahmed Aslam) outside the place in
1979, when, to mark the restaurant's 15th birthday, he rolled the prices back to 1964 levels.

Back then, my seafaring grandfather (then well into his seventies) waved the menu away, and in rusty, but fluent Urdu, asked for the desi curry - the one the guys would be eating in the back kitchen.

After that, we were treated like royalty, with the waiters taking me and my grandpa through to the kitchen.
He'd learned Urdu, and a score of other languages, while working as a chief engineer, sailing out of the Clyde.

He loved his curries - the hotter the better - and, on ship, would desert the captain's table to eat with 'his boys' - the Indian 'lascars' who kept the ship's boilers stoked.

Mr Ali's father, Noor Mohammed, had opened what is regarded as the city's first proper Indian restaurant, the 'Green Gates, in nearby Bank Street, in 1959.

The Shish also lays claim to inventing chicken tikka masala. When one customer complained that their chicken tikka was too dry, the enterprising chefs knocked up a sauce, using a can of Heinz Cream of Tomato soup, and some Indian spices.