KOTHU ROTTI
Four pounds buys a pair of butter parotta here, which a Glasgow curry blogger who has eaten across Sri Lanka called the best value in the city.
Why go
Ravi and Anitha opened their first shop on St George's Road in Woodside in the summer of 2025, cooking Jaffna Tamil food out of a takeaway with two tables under a lean-to. Within two months they had agreed to take over North Star Cafe on Queen Margaret Drive, which Ravi told Hector at Curry-Heute in October 2025 was shortly to become theirs
(Curry-Heute). The Glasgow City food register picked up the second premises in January 2026, and that West End address is the one on Jeff's pin. Ravi and Anitha named the shop for the kothu: roti chopped on a hot griddle with curry, scrambled egg, onion and green chilli, worked with two blades until it is somewhere between a hash and a stir-fry. The rest of the menu runs deeper than that, with puttu steamed and served with crab curry, idiyappam string hoppers, and a Jaffna-style thaali at lunch that comes with mutton piratal, fried brinjal, rasam, curd and pickle (Kothu Rotti).
Order this / avoid
- Order: the butter parotta, sold in pairs. These are Malabar parotta, laminated and slapped out so they pull apart in sheets, and Hector wrote that they
were totally in the style. Soft, layered, stretchy, and indeed, Buttery
1. Put them next to the mutton curry, which he found carriedthe rich Smoky, Peppery blast
on the first dip. Then the mutton kothu itself, chopped fine with vegetables, egg and curry leaf. - Avoid: expecting a thick sauce. The mutton curry arrives
As Soupy as a Curry can be,
which is how kitchens across the south of India and Sri Lanka serve it, so take a spoon to it rather than fighting it with bread1.
What locals & experts say
- Curry-Heute (Hector, October 2025), on the parotta price:
£4.00 for a pair of Malabar Parotta, this must be the best value in the city.
1 - Curry-Heute, on the mutton kothu:
The dish was Sri Lankan and full of finely chopped everything,
withgreen chillies gave the food a kick
and curry leaves chopped through it, judgeda new experience, but a very satisfying one.
1 - Ravi, owner, asked what the enormous platter he carried out was:
My lunch.
1 - The venue, on itself: traditional Tamil cooking,
authentic Sri Lankan and South Indian cuisine,
with the Jaffna thaali as the lunch anchor.2 - Local rec: Jeff's save. He left no note on it.
Good to know
- Which site: Jeff's pin is Queen Margaret Drive in the West End, the room that used to be North Star Cafe. The original at 427 St George's Road in Woodside is a takeaway where you eat outside under cover.
- Timing: the Woodside shop opens daily at 10am for breakfast, and at 4pm on Mondays. Hours at the West End site are not documented anywhere found, so check before you go.
- Booking: walk-in.
- Price: GBP 19.98 fed two people at the original in October 2025, including two curries and a pair of parotta.
- Hygiene: both Glasgow addresses are registered with the Food Hygiene Information Scheme and are Awaiting Inspection, which is the normal status for premises registered within the last year. Neither carries a failing rating.3
Verdict
could-visit — Kothu Rotti is a Tamil kitchen from Jaffna cooking kothu, puttu with crab curry and string hoppers, at prices that read like a typo. Hector at Curry-Heute paid GBP 4.00 for a pair of butter parotta at the family's first shop and called it the best value in the city, then found 'the rich Smoky, Peppery blast' when he dipped one in the mutton curry. Sri Lankan cooking is thin on the ground in Glasgow and a proper kothu, roti chopped on the griddle with curry, egg and chilli, is worth going out of your way for once. The rung stays at could-visit because the West End site is new and nobody has written about it yet.