The Beginning

Tharavadu is the ancestral home — and the family inside it.

In Malayalam, the word Tharavadu refers to the matrilineal joint-family system practised in Kerala until the 1940s. It was a legal entity, capable of owning land. It was a building — a teak-and-laterite house with a central courtyard and a kitchen that fed thirty people at a sitting. Most importantly, it was the family who lived there: grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, all under one roof, all eating from the same pot.

The system has gone. The building still stands, in pieces, across the Malabar coast. The cooking — that hasn't changed.

2014 — Mill Hill

A new wave, on Leeds high street.

We opened on Mill Hill in June 2014 — part of a new wave of high-end restaurants sweeping across Leeds and changing the way the city ate Asian food. We weren't a curry house. We weren't a "fusion" idea. We were Kerala — specifically Malabar and Wayanad — cooked the way our family cooked it.

Pothu Peralan — the beef-and-coconut starter from Kerala's thattu-kada street-food joints. Meen Pollichathu — fish wrapped in banana leaf, marinated in our family's spice paste, grilled. Tharavadu Seafood Curry — the dish served at the church feast in Arthungal, the pilgrim village on the Kerala coast. None of these were on a Leeds menu before. They are now.

Recognition

Four years in the Michelin Restaurant Guide.

The Michelin Restaurant Guide listed us in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 — the only Indian restaurant in Leeds in the 2019 edition. We were Best Indian Restaurant in Leeds at the Oliver Awards two years running. We've been featured in Harden's UK Restaurant Guide, the Yorkshire Post, and Square Meal.

None of that changes how we cook. The recognition is welcome; the recipes were already there.

See what we're cooking today →

Tharavadu, in numbers

Ten years of Kerala cooking in Leeds.

2014

The opening

June. Mill Hill. The same address we're at today.

Years in Michelin

2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. The only Indian restaurant in Leeds in the 2019 edition.

×2

Oliver Awards

Best Indian Restaurant in Leeds, two years running.

Family kitchen

Same kitchen, same family, same Kerala recipes since day one.

A family kitchen, transplanted.