Spotlight On... My Delhi's Elahi Shah Amin
We chat to My Delhi's Elahi Shah Amin about his award-winning Indian restaurants and why he's published a cook book
My Delhi has revolutionised Indian food in Newcastle, bringing regional cuisine, new tastes and a new dining experience to the city.
The man behind the growing My Delhi brand is Elahi Shah Amin, a human dynamo who manages to juggle numerous plates and still make sure those plates are full of really amazing food. We caught up with Elahi to talk about his background, his restaurants and his plans for the future.
It’s fair to say that catering is in Elahi Shah Amin’s blood.
“I’ve always been involved in the Indian restaurant trade, since a very young age," he says. "I was working in my uncle’s restaurant when I was 14, and my father had restaurants too. It’s almost hereditary!”
Eventually, Elahi’s life took a different path - he went to college then university, and now works in digital media for Newcastle City Council, getting out of the restaurant business completely around eight years ago. But as he explains, he always thought something was missing.
“Being a British-born Bangladeshi and always being involved in Indian food, I could see dining trends and people’s tastebuds changing," says Elahi. “I had a particular concept in my head of what would work if I came across a chef with the right set of skills. In 2018, I was introduced to Gaurav [Dayal, executive chef at My Delhi] and he cooked me dishes like butter chicken and I was completely blown away. I thought, ‘this is like nothing I’ve ever tasted’. It was really authentic Indian food - this is what I’ve been missing.”
Elahi realised that most of the food at Indian restaurants in the UK had been heavily adapted for the British palate, but that we were becoming better educated about what we eat, understanding that India – like Italy or France – has many different cuisines. Now he’d found the right chef in Gaurav, who was born in Delhi, he decided to open a restaurant that concentrated on that region and married his long front of house experience to Gaurav’s skills and local expertise.
Elahi wanted to concentrate on good service (“My father brought me up to realise customers should be treated as guests in your own home”) and good regional food, and he wanted to create a chain, something which never seemed to happen here. He hit upon the concept of a restaurant that felt like you were eating in a Delhi street market serving up Delhi-derived street food dishes - and so the idea of My Delhi was born.
Following a lot of research and study, Elahi and Guarav opened the first branch of My Delhi in Newcastle in 2019, following up with a Sunderland branch last year and Leicester in October 2023 (“which is going exceptionally well!”).
Using Guarav’s skills and Elahi’s knowledge of the market, they’ve definitely hit on a willing formula, winning all sorts of awards including a perfect score on Britain’s Top Takeaway last year. They’ve also won the Argie Bhaaji food battle at Wylam two years running.
“It’s really fun, really busy. It’s such a brilliant festival, lots of great people attend and the whole vibe is brilliant," says Elahi.
One aspect of what My Delhi has to offer that you don’t often find elsewhere is Indo-Chinese food which Elahi describes as a cuisine developed in the 19th century as Chinese labourers migrated to Kolkata to work and adapted their Chinese dishes to suit local tastes. He's even taken this a stage further by opening Wok India, a specifically Indo-Chinese restaurant in High Heaton.
As if running several restaurants and working in digital media isn’t enough, Elahi is now a published author too - a career plot twist that came about during lockdown when he spent a lot of time cooking for his kids.
“We eat a lot of south Asian food at home, but I like to add a twist," he explains. "I make fusion dishes - butter chicken pasta, stuff like that - and my daughter said I should post them on TikTok.”
Elahi now has more than 300,000 followers on TikTok @babacooks and all this led to the publication of his debut cookbook Hey Baba Here! which features a whole host of family favourite dishes with easy-to-follow recipes. He's clearly got the publishing bug because Elahi even has a second book planned focusing on how to treat health issues using natural ingredients and diet.
As always, we had to ask Elahi what a first-time visitor to My Delhi should eat. He naturally picked the butter chicken.
“British curry houses have lots of variations but our butter chicken is more authentic because our chef grew up in Delhi," he says. "It’s become our signature dish and our customers love it. A careful balance is key to the dish even though it seems quite simple and the chicken is roasted in the tandoor first to get a smoky flavour”.
The other big hit is the cauliflower Manchuria, an Indo-Chinese dish that has lots of umami flavour and is one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes.
Given Elahi’s seemingly endless energy and constant ideas, it’s safe to say that he’s probably already working on his next project. But right now, we recommend you pay a visit to the lively, vibey My Delhi restaurant to find out what he’s up to. Make sure you try the butter chicken!
