News / Restaurants
This is officially Bristol’s best Indian restaurant
A commemorative plate that could contain enough curry to feed a small army is now on display at Indian Rassasy.
The plate is the award recently handed to the owners of this Hotwells restaurant when it was named as the best curry house in Bristol at a prestigious awards ceremony.
For co-owner Shamshuddin Bagalkote, known to everyone as Sam, it is the culmination of a career that started in his family business: cooking and serving lunch to railway workers in the Indian city of Miraj.
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Sam’s journey to award-winning restaurateur has included time spent working at a five-star hotel in Delhi, and managing restaurants in Birmingham and Bristol.
After leaving Urban Tandoor on Small Street, Sam tried and failed to secure ten locations across Bristol to open his first restaurant before finding 275 Hotwell Road.
Friends in the industry warned him not to open in a corner building on a car-dominated street with no parking, but he has since proved the naysayers wrong.
The award-winning Indian Rassasy on Hotwell Road – photo: Martin Booth
“We get so much support,” says Sam before service on a recent evening.
“In the hard times, we scarcely would have survived without the support of the locals from Hotwells and Cliftonwood.
“But we also get people coming here from Portishead, Nailsea, Backwell, Long Ashton. They travel into Bristol and we are the first restaurant that they find!”
Sam, 42, who lives in Kingswood with his wife Sameena, a nurse at Southmead Hospital, and their two children, ten-year-old Ayera and five-year-old Moeez, is keen to stress that while he is front of house, his business partner Bulan Shaikh does most of the hard work in the kitchen.
The menu here is as authentic as possible, with dishes from north, south and east India.
A dish that Sam is particularly proud of is the dhaba chicken and lamb, based on a Punjabi curry served at Indian roadside eateries.
The team at Indian Rassasy receive their giant plate at the Curry Life Awards ceremony in London – photo: Curry Life Awards
Sam says that Indian Rassasy’s win at the Curry Life Awards for best restaurant in Bristol was “totally unexpected”.
“It’s a dream come true for me. I feel on top of the world! And it is motivation to do better.
“This gives us an opportunity to serve more people and to grow, maybe try different things, if people want to eat authentic Indian food.
“People come in here happy, we make them go home happy and that makes me happy.”
Main photo: Lois Booth
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