City Tastes & Tipples:'˜It's food like your mum or gran cooks'

Silver Street Spice knows what it does best.
Silver Street Spice, Abrar Nawaz.Silver Street Spice, Abrar Nawaz.
Silver Street Spice, Abrar Nawaz.

It’s an unpretentious cafe and curry house just off Westgate that specialises in traditional homemade mains and starters.

The menu, featuring meat and vegetable curries, is made fresh each morning and changes every day.

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The shami kebab and chicken samosa have a real rustic feel, and the curry – potato and courgette – is unfussy and full of flavour.

Silver Street Spice.Silver Street Spice.
Silver Street Spice.

Manager Abrar Nawaz, who runs the cafe with his partner, decided to open the restaurant to pass on the recipes he learned at home.

He said: “It’s food like your mum or your grandma might cook.”

Currently the cafe focuses on lunch, serving hot food from 10.30am to 6pm. There are plans in the long term to expand into evening trade but so far Abrar is focusing on making sure the basics are perfect.

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And if curry isn’t to your taste, there’s a range of breakfasts, burgers, paninis and sandwiches on the menu.

The walls of the cafe are adorned with flyers with positive, inspirational slogans. It’s a tradition that started when the cafe opened a year ago.

Abrar would print off a new one each day and carried on until the wall was full. He said: “The idea behind the all of the signs was to have food for your hunger and food for your soul.

“One meal to fill people and one to make them satisfied and give them peace of mind.

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“A lot people who come in at lunchtime are stressed out from work and it seemed like a good idea to take the weight off their minds.”

Pop in to Silver Street Spice for lunch.

Customers can eat in or take away and the number of returning customers on even given lunchtime is testament to how well the cafe has taken off in its first year.

Curries are inexpensive, with a decent sized bowl of whatever Abrar has rustled up available for £3.50.