Kerala Canteen, Leeds: 'I ate at the new Yorkshire restaurant from Masterchef and Great British Menu contestant - and the food was excellent'

In those days curry houses were a familiar sight in our towns and cities serving up a largely homogenised menu to shake our dull palettes out of their lethargy.

Back then Britain’s culinary scene was, with a few notable exceptions, floundering in a sea of blandness from where Indian restaurants shone like beacons, offering up exotic-sounding dishes and flavours that seemed like they were from another planet (or at least another continent).

British food has undergone a welcome renaissance since then thanks in no small measure to the influx of culinary influences from around the world.

This has extended to the plethora of South Asian restaurants that have moved with the times to create a more modern dining experience, offering up street food-inspired snacks and modern twists on old favourites inspired by regional variations from across the vast Indian sub-continent.

Kerala Canteen, which opened earlier this year, is part of this new wave of restaurants with its distinctive take on South Indian tapas.

It’s the brainchild of Bobby Geetha, who appeared on both MasterChef: The Professionals and the Great British Menu, and is inspired by Kerala’s traditional toddy shops (pubs) – where bold, spicy “touchings” (small plates) have been shared over local palm wine for generations.

Its location, opposite the BBC’s Leeds HQ, is a little bit out of the way, but the fact that Kendalls, one of the city’s most popular dining spots, is just a few doors down, is proof that a good restaurant can flourish here.

It’s also just a short walk from Leeds Playhouse which makes it handy for the pre-theatre crowd.

We paid a visit on a grim, midweek winter’s evening (only fools and restaurant critics venture out on nights like this), with the rain pounding the pavement outside.

The inclement weather made the restaurant, which has its own water feature by the entrance, feel even more warm and welcoming.

And it was actually warm. This might seem neither here nor there, but as anyone who regularly eats out will tell you there are few things more dispiriting than walking into a restaurant that feels like an ice box.

Geetha and co have designed a plush, modern-looking restaurant, with the partially mirrored walls adding to the spacious feel of the place.

And while the mock blossom draped across the ceiling seems to play to the Instagram crowd and won’t be to everybody’s taste, it does add a splash of colour.

If the décor is different then so, too, is the music, with the rock and pop playlist a far cry from the sitar music spilling out of tinny speakers that I remember from the curry houses of yesteryear.

The menu revolves around shareable tapas plates, curry bowls and biryanis, and draws on the flavours and heritage of India’s southern coast featuring the likes of crispy gunpowder hasselback potatoes, jackfruit biryani and duck kothu porotta – shredded bread tossed in a pulled duck leg masala topped with a fried egg.

Their aim, they say, is to create contemporary dishes by combining authentic Keralan flavours with Yorkshire produce and I’d say for the most part they have pulled it off.

From the tempting array of dishes on the tapas list (all a tenner or under), we plumped for the lightly battered calamari with curry mayonnaise. The batter could have been slightly crispier, but the calamari was soft and dipped in the mayo was a moreish delight.

The Trivandrum fried chicken with fried garlic yoghurt, named after the Keralan state capital, was equally impressive with the succulent chicken the star of the show, though it certainly wasn’t shy in coming forward on the heat front which was a little bit at odds with the “lightly spiced” description.

We went for a couple of curries, including the salmon and green mango curry. Fish curries can sometimes fail to live up to expectations, but here the salmon was well cooked and the skin crispy, as promised.

Better still was the slow cooked beef and bone marrow curry, inspired by a Kerala toddy shop recipe. It was as good as it sounds, the meat tender and the bone marrow adding flavour and richness to the sauce, perfect for mopping up with the porotta.

I’m a fairly recent convert to this delicious, flaky, layered bread, but like all good converts I now champion it with an evangelical zeal.

The food was excellent, and my only criticism is we were still eating the starters when the curries arrived. Perhaps this is the grazing-style experience they go for, but it would have been nice to be told.

We were too stuffed for a pudding though I would point out that three of the four choices on the dessert menu contained nuts which they might want to look at given how common nut allergies are.

The service was attentive and though less than half full there was a pleasant buzz about the place. The final bill, including service, a large glass of wine and a non-alcoholic beer, was £70.36, which is good going for the quality and quantity we had.

South Asian cuisine in this country has come a long way from those old-school curry houses, but while they might seem dated to us now, the pioneering migrant families that ran them left an indelible cultural legacy.

They also paved the way for a new and exciting generation of restaurants, like Kerala Canteen – and we, quite literally, get to taste the rewards of their endeavour.

Welcome 4/5

Food 4/5

Atmosphere 4/5

Prices 4/5

Kerala Canteen, 5 St Peter’s Street, Leeds. LS9 8AQ. Tel: 0113 873 0635. www.keralacanteen.com