Fast becoming one of Scotland’s top chefs in Indian cuisine, if not already, Praveen Kumar has gone from strength to strength of late, including relaunching his UK-wide curry club.
His restaurant Tabla, in the heart of Perth, has become a well-known institution for more than a decade in terms of portraying a different side of Indian food than the traditional curry houses, and Praveen has the awards to prove it.
Also, with much success of his frozen meal range over the past year, the team behind Praveen have helped to relaunch Kumar’s Curry Club, bringing his authentic food to doorsteps across the UK.
And to add another notch to his already full belt, Praveen’s residency at Perth’s Food and Drink park led him to open an Argos-style curry outlet which allows people to turn up and either order or collect from Praveen’s extensive range of curries.
“The shop is not actually a physical shop where you can browse around,” says Praveen. “It’s more like an Argos-style shop, where you come in and order from the menu and then we can go inside the freezer and get the meals.
“The meals are all made fresh and then blast frozen to lock in the flavours and can be defrosted and reheated at home to enjoy.
“The shop is also for people to come and collect after ordering online. There is a menu already online for those who want to order or there are plenty in the new unit.
“The items available through the curry club are the same that are available through the shop.”
Kumar’s curry club
After testing the waters with his curry club at the end of lockdown last year and the start of 2021, Praveen had plans to reach 1 million sales of his curries, the recipes of which have been cooked for decades at Tabla.
Now relaunching the curry club in early September, Praveen is able to deliver his dishes to people across the UK, with almost 15,000 members already signed up to receive regular deliveries.
“The curry club is along similar lines of Gousto and HelloFresh but this one is slightly more convenient,” he adds. “The food is cooked fresh here, frozen and ready to be put in the oven once it arrives. It’s a full meal ready to consume.
“The idea of the curry club is to give a bit of flexibility for people who do like spice and those who don’t. For those who don’t, you can still have your butter chickens etc.
“It also allows you to decide how frequently you get the curries – it could be once every second week, once a month or even once a year.
“When you sign up you don’t need to sign a contract, there are no cancellation fees, you just say when you want it delivered and you can pause, completely cancel or hold frequent deliveries.”
Culinary expression
Members of the curry club can choose a variety of different dishes hand-cooked by Praveen, or they can sign up to a regular “meal box” that showcases various regions of India through food.
Praveen continues: “Every month there is a culinary expression from each region in India that is available through the curry club. For example, this month we are doing a taste of Rajasthan. It’s the land of palaces and the food reflects that.
“Then next month we are looking to a taste of Andhra Pradesh, which is where the business moguls tend to live and the food is based on the biryanis and lots of tamarind-based curries.
“It’s very regionalised but I also wanted to showcase Indian food that you don’t really get elsewhere in Scotland.”
Also allowing some flexibility in terms of allowing customers to cancel regular boxes or even gift them to friends and family elsewhere in the UK, Praveen says that it’s another way of keeping people interested in the curry club.
“Say for example people usually get a curry club delivery but they have friends coming over next week,” he says. “They might want to add on some more items to their meal box for them, which they are able to do.
“Also, if your freezer is full once week or month when you are expecting a meal box delivery you can gift it to your friends and family across the UK.
“We use a special frozen foods courier to deliver the boxes for the curry club members who are slightly further afield, such as over in the Scottish islands, otherwise it’s DPD for everywhere from Elgin to Wick and down south.
“We can do from Perth to Portsmouth next day guaranteed. It all comes frozen as we use dry ice and 99% biodegradable packaging.”
Cuisine revolution
With Indian cuisine undergoing somewhat of a revolution thanks to Praveen and his team, among others, the chef hopes to showcase more of his authentic food, which he prides himself on being able to trace back to the source.
“A decade ago you had all curry houses in Scotland. Now we have a reference of Indian food and I think Tabla is part of the revelation around the cuisine. In 2010 we won an AA One Rosette and I feel since then we’ve shown that Indian restaurants don’t just have to be curry houses,” he says.
“I think the culture around the cuisine in Scotland has changed a lot and Tabla is one of the restaurants, as well as some in Edinburgh and other places, that is at the forefront of the revolution around the Indian cuisine scene.
“I can trace back every single ingredient we use, including our spices. My in-laws and my parents grow spices back in India and they send them here for me to use in my cooking.
“I also work with lots of local farmers as well as local butchers. All of the meats we use come from Scotland, all of our chicken comes from Britain and spices come from India.
“The provenance is very strong and there are no preservatives in any of the food whatsoever, for both the curry club and Tabla.
“We’ve made a point of having zero preservatives and we buy fresh food and ingredients as much as possible. Then we cook the food and, for the curry club, we blast freeze it so it can lock in all of the flavours without the need to use preservatives.”