Has Laurieston invented the perfect restaurant?

Tanga Khan takes spice seriously. This makes sense — he once worked in a Pakistani restaurant in London where the head chef used a “secret room” (a room within a room) to make the spice mix. But according to Khan, who is the culinary brains behind the six-month-old Afghan restaurant Khyber Sheenwari, the key isn’t an elaborate spice mix, so much as the right amount. This is because too much spice is bad for your health, he says. “Shinwari food doesn’t use spice.” (This, as the slowly building burn in my mouth tells me, is relative.) Instead, the Shinwari people’s signature flavour combo for many of their savoury dishes is ginger, black pepper, and fresh tomato. Warming, rather than spicy. “Many” Pakistani, Afghan, and Kurdish people come to Khyber Sheenwari “because our spice is balanced”, boasts Jahangir, an elegantly-dressed waiter on hand to translate for his boss. Clearly, the spice is right. 

Eating here was a lesson in culinary geography. Tanga is Shinwari — that is, a Pashtun tribe settled mainly across eastern Afghanistan, including the Khyber Pass area. The Khyber Pass is a route that has delivered silk road travellers through the mountains between eastern Afghanistan and Peshawar in Pakistan for centuries. The Pass isn’t just a geographic connection — it’s also a culinary and cultural one. Some Shinwari live in the Pakistani side of the mountains, and the food culture crosses over just as readily, which means if you go to certain Afghan and Pakistani restaurants, you might not see a huge difference between the cuisines. 

I’m here because Robbie and I were at the Laurieston and recently decided to give this newish restaurant on the other side of Bridge Street a try. If you’re a regular reader, you will know that the following means very little to me when rating restaurants: vibe, presentation, elaborate serving structures (small plates be damned). Don’t get me started on how performatively casual – think: exposed brick walls, run from an old converted warehouse – most modern western establishments are only to switch up and charge you £30 for a plate plus a ‘discretionary, but it’ll be really awkward if you ask to remove it’ service charge. I like the opposite of that: tasty and affordable food in an unpretentious setting, and anything that hits this sweet spot gets termed a “humble yum”. But actually, eating out in Laurieston recently challenged the humble part of the equation. 

Last July, I wrote about this area and its imminent reinvention by the council and New Gorbals Housing Association, and I got to know the man behind the nearby Pakistani restaurant Namak Mandi. Judged on looks alone, the former Gorbals Library-turned 800-seater restaurant is about as far from humble as you can imagine: black and gold resin walls, gleaming chairs, waiters in waistcoats and waitresses in blazers — and that’s before we get to the manager Nade Ali sashaying around in velvet and loafers. Yet this Versailles-like decor didn’t come with the triple-digit bill to match — instead, what you get here is rustic food at a reasonable price, served to you by an army of staff who treat you like royalty. It’s pretty much the same deal at Khyber Sheenwari, only the decor’s dialled back a bit here. 

Their similarities don’t feel coincidental. After all, both the proprietors of these restaurants have spent a long time among the webs of wires and honking tuktuks of Peshawar in Pakistan — and have brought its culinary tradition to Glasgow. This means both venues serve mantu, lamb-filled hand-rolled dumplings; most lamb dishes skew closer to stew than curry. Both offer the street food found across Pakistan, but made famous in Peshawar, such as chapli kabab and karahi curries. Having eaten in both these establishments now I am confident I’ve got at least a novice’s grasp of the borderlands cuisine of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and how it is influenced by the city of Peshawar.

Hi, Calum here. As I hope you can tell, whether I'm getting ripped off at a restaurant really matters to me, as it does all of us. I think about it, and how to avoid it, a lot. That's why, when I find somewhere like Khyber Sheenwari, I want to know everything about it and share that with people. Of course, it's not the only place in Glasgow that offers such good value for money, but it is one of the newest. And if you want to read on and hear Tanga's compelling back story, you'll need to be a paid subscriber.

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