The story behind Mandala Kitchen

Ananya Rao still keeps a laminated copy of her grandmother’s sambar recipe in the drawer under the till. The paper is stained, the measurements are in handfuls, and it is the reason Mandala Kitchen exists.

She trained as a nurse in Birmingham, cooked for friends on her days off, and spent two years testing a lunch menu from a rented church kitchen. When a unit on St Mary’s Row came up, she signed the lease before she had a coffee machine.

The café is Tamil in its bones and Brummie in its hours. Regulars come for the gunpowder potatoes, the filter coffee, and the fact that Ananya will remember if you asked for no chilli last Tuesday.

“I did not want a restaurant that performed being Indian,” she says. “I wanted a room where my aunties would actually eat.”