Turban Tandoori
Purushottam Aryal was named Chef of the Year at the Scottish Curry Awards 2022, cooking in a Giffnock room the Purewal family has run since 1982.
Why go
The restaurant opened in 1982 and calls itself one of Glasgow's oldest Indian rooms, still in family hands, with a team led by Bobby and many of the chefs and staff related to each other (venue site). Kirsten Oswald, then the MP for East Renfrewshire, tabled a Commons motion in June 2022 recognizing Aryal's Chef of the Year award and recalling that the restaurant had also taken several awards at the previous year's Scottish Curry Awards, which the motion does not name (UK Parliament EDM 59889). Front of house is Jai, whose brother Danny ran Danny Singh's Gandhi before retiring (Curry-Heute). The kitchen works whole spices and a real tandoor, and the menu reaches past the standard carte into South Indian dishes and a list of kormas. The staff also raised six hundred pounds for Epilepsy Scotland off a Movember challenge, through a connection with Queen's Park SFC.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Lamb Achari, and stir the complimentary lime pickle into it. That is exactly what Hector did before the dish worked:
now we're talking! This was Achari!
2 Take the Mushroom Zeera Rice with it, the one item he committed to reordering. The naans are worth having:risen, puffy, and big burnt blisters.
- Avoid: the creamy kormas if heat and smoke are what you want. The Pistachio Korma and the Malaidar are built sweet and mild by design. Skip the Turban Special Daal as well, which Hector found too soupy, and take the complimentary daal instead.
What locals & experts say
- Scottish Curry Awards 2022, Chef of the Year: won by Purushottam Aryal, cooking here, as recorded in a UK Parliament Early Day Motion tabled by the constituency MP.1
- Hector, Curry-Heute (December 2022), on the lamb, which is the check on all of the above:
The majority of my ten pieces of Meat required chewing, only a few pieces were as Tender as Peter had described.
On the South Indian dish at the table he adds that when his companionreported no smokiness, I felt a bit of a let-down.
2 - The same review, on what the table is given before ordering:
Complimentary Poppadoms, Dips, Lime Pickle and a big pot of Spiced Onions soon arrived. This is how it should be.
2 - Peter, one of Hector's party, on the Lamb Kerela:
The lamb was incredibly tender, melt in the mouth. A little bit of sweetness from the coconut, with a slight kick from the other spices, very enjoyable.
2 - Local rec: Jeff's save. He left no note on it.
Good to know
- Timing: 5pm to 10pm, seven days a week. Nothing at lunch.
- Booking: worth booking. It was empty at 5pm on a Friday in December and every table was taken by half five, and the party in question was asked for the table back at 6.30pm, though not pushed out.
- Takeaway: there is a separate takeaway menu. There is also a dining room, which is where the cooking is worth going to.
- Price: mains ran from around ten to thirteen pounds in December 2022, and a bill for four with wine came to GBP 97.70. Treat those figures as four years old.
- Contact: 0141 638 0069, which is also the number for gift vouchers.
- Where it actually is: Giffnock, in East Renfrewshire, on Station Road near the railway station, outside the Glasgow city boundary.
- Hygiene: East Renfrewshire Council rates the address a Pass under the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, inspected 1 July 2025.4
Verdict
should-visit — One of Glasgow's oldest Indian restaurants, opened in Giffnock by the Purewal family in 1982 and still run by them. Purushottam Aryal took Chef of the Year at the Scottish Curry Awards 2022, and the local MP put it in a Commons motion that also recalls unnamed wins the year before. The room fills by half five on a Friday, poppadoms, dips, lime pickle and finely cut spiced onions arrive before you order anything, and the naans come out risen and blistered. Hector of Curry-Heute, who has reviewed over a thousand Glasgow curry houses, found the breads excellent and the Mushroom Zeera Rice worth reordering, but wanted more smoke and more tenderness from the lamb, so this is a very good mainstream house rather than a Southside curry cafe.