Here at the Shish Mahal we like to think of our food as a journey, one during which we can take you places which will excite, places you might not have thought of going, but ones you will enjoy once you get there. Our menu takes you on a trip from the ultra-cool slopes of the Himalayas to the fiery plains of Madras, from the lush valleys of Swat to the bountiful Indian Ocean, with more than several stops along the way.
The sub-continent has a different cooking style every fifty kilometres, and here, we quietly boast, you can try most of them. And of course there are the European influences and our customers’ suggestions. Nowadays our dishes are truly eclectic, with ingredients as diverse as Cognac, South Pacific King Prawns and Marmellata di Rosa sourced from the rose fields of the Swat valley in the Himalayas. These are not cheap, but nothing but the best is good enough for our customers.
The earliest known recipe for meat in a spicy sauce with nan bread appears on tablets found near Babylon in Mesopotamia, written in the cuneiform text of the Sumerians from around 1700 BC. The Shish Mahal hasn’t been in Glasgow quite that long, but its culture and cuisine have changed Glasgow’s tastes, just as Glasgow’s tastes have changed the Shish, as it is affectionately known by our customers, and Glasgow has become The Curry Capital of the United Kingdom beyond all dispute.
The founder, Ali Ahmed Aslam, the handsome chap with the grey hair, opened the Shish Mahal in the Sixties and generations of Glaswegians know him as Mr Ali. This was something sensationally new, waiters wearing dinner jackets and a menu with all sorts of new taste sensations, including our world famous (and unchanged) lamb bhoona, a dish so addictive, we are told, that there has been talk of classifying it as a Class A drug.The menu has broadened down the years to reflect the changing and more sophisticated tastes of our clientele, but we like to think that our values remain the same.
Good food and good service will never go out of fashion. Our motto is: “Unspoilt by progress”, and we plan to keep it that way.Our customers are almost as eclectic as our menu. They come back, year after year, from far-flung corners of the globe, and they recommend us to their friends, something that we find particularly heart-warming.We hope that you will find our menu and your meal to be equally heart-warming. Welcome to the Shish Mahal.