'A business with heart and soul': How Tharavadu put Kerala on Leeds’ culinary map

When Tharavadu opened its doors near Leeds station in 2014, the team knew they didn’t want to be just another Indian restaurant.

They wanted to tell a story of family, Kerala, and a way of cooking where every spice is ground by hand and every curry base is made fresh each morning.

“Tharavadu is a family-run business; it’s not a big chain,” said Abi Ajith, son of co-founder Ajith Nair and part of the second generation running the restaurant into its second decade.

“There are five owners - Siby, Prakash, Mano, Rajesh and my dad, Ajith. All the family are in it together.”

The idea was to showcase the food and culture of Kerala - a coastal state in South India - rather than familiar high-street staples.

“When you look at Indian cuisine, there are so many different types. India is huge, spices are huge, but what people usually know is chicken tikka, jalfrezi, the commercial stuff,” Abi explained.

“We wanted to showcase south India, Kerala especially, with the spices we use, the way we cook, the culture - it’s so different to what you’d expect up north.”

That meant some raised eyebrows in the early days.

“People would come in, look at the menu and say, ‘This is very strange. Where’s the chicken tikka?’” Abi said. “We’d say, ‘We don’t have that here. But have you tried this chicken curry? It’s cooked this way, with these ingredients’. They’d try it and go, ‘Wow, this is outstanding.’ They were blown away.”

Word spread quickly, and getting a table has become increasingly hard over the years.

“People have to book three months in advance,” Abi said. “You can’t just turn up one day. Everything is made in-house - we grind the spices, every sauce is prepared differently, each dish has its own flavour. We even have a chef whose only job is parathas (a type of flatbread), every single morning.”

That attention to detail has turned Tharavadu into something far more than a restaurant for many regulars.

Abi said it’s more than a business, it’s a community - and they’ve had customers come in every week for the last 12 years.

Abi grew up with the restaurant, pulling his first shifts in Year 9 for pocket money before studying economics and finance at university and landing a corporate job in aviation. But sitting at a desk wasn’t for him.

“My whole upbringing was speaking to people, being active, solving problems,” he said. “In corporate finance I loved it, but I couldn’t sit behind a desk. Every day here feels like the first day you open - that’s the feeling this place gives you.”

The emotional connection between Tharavadu and Leeds is why Abi thinks the city has got behind them.

“We’re a Keralan family who moved from Leicester. The people of Leeds really took us on board, helped us,” he said. “A review recently said we’re ‘a business with heart and soul’ - when you read that, you think, wow. We owe so much to Leeds. Without our customers, this little family business wouldn’t be here.”

Over the years, Tharavadu has picked up famous fans, from the Indian cricket team - including Virat Kohli and Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma - to actors, musicians and politicians.

On one memorable visit, Kohli - who Abi compares to Ronaldo - popped in for lunch with his family.

“He’d been before but couldn’t eat peacefully because of the fans outside,” Abi recalled. “He left and said, ‘I promise I’ll come back.’ The next year he walked in at lunchtime with his wife, looked at my uncle and said, ‘Prakash, I told you I’d come back.’

“My uncle dropped his phone; e was shaking. For someone like that to remember your name, in a tiny family restaurant in Leeds - it was unbelievable.”

Despite the star power, Tharavadu has never lost its homely feel. The name means “ancestral home” - a place where the wider family gathers - and that ethos runs through the menu and service.

“We want people to feel like they’re part of the business when they sit down,” Abi said. “Our service is very friendly, very homely. We want it to be for everyday people, not a premium, intimidating place.”

That philosophy carries across to Uyare, Tharavadu’s sister restaurant in Victoria Gate, which puts a more elevated, cocktail-bar spin on Keralan flavours.

“Tharavadu is where you come for an anniversary or a special family meal,” Abi said. “Uyare is where you might go with friends for cocktails and nibbles after work. But the roots are the same: Keralan food, cooked properly, and that same friendly, homely service.”

The menu at Tharavadu has evolved, but some dishes are untouchable.

There are about 10 dishes that have never left the menu, including the Kerala kozhi curry, the chilli paneer, the house chicken curry, some of the fish curries, and the breads.

New dishes still go through a multi-stage tasting panel - chefs, front-of-house, regulars, the wider family and wine merchants - before making it onto the menu.

“We’re very careful about what we put on,” he said. “We want everyone to enjoy it - not too spicy, not too mild - while keeping the authentic flavours. It goes through a lot before it lands on your plate.”

Looking ahead, the Tharavadu family isn’t slowing down. A new Indo-Chinese concept inspired by the hybrid restaurants found in Kerala’s hotels is in the pipeline.

“Imagine our type of spices with a bit of Chinese influence,” Abi said. “It’s a completely different style of cooking, but the same passion.”

For now, though, Abi’s focus remains on the dining room in front of him.

“When you stand at the end of the restaurant, you see families, first dates, corporate meetings - all here for different reasons, but coming together for food,” he said. “When they leave with happy, smiling faces, that’s what matters most. You never get tired of that.”