"Suswadu" is a Bengali word — it means something close to "delicious," but with a warmth to it that the English word does not quite carry. When your grandmother puts a plate in front of you and you take that first mouthful, what you say is "Suswadu." It is appreciation and comfort rolled into one.
That is the feeling we want you to leave with.
We came to Appleby because it felt right. A small market town in the Eden Valley, surrounded by the Pennines, the kind of place where people still know each other by name. We wanted to be part of that — to add something to Bridge Street rather than just open another restaurant.
Appleby gave us a community. We wanted to give back the food we grew up with: bold, layered, full of character. Not the watered-down version. The real thing.
Everything is made from scratch. Spices are ground fresh. Sauces are not batch-cooked and reheated — each order is prepared individually, which takes a few minutes longer but makes an enormous difference to what ends up on your plate.
We source locally where it makes sense (lamb, vegetables, dairy) and import what we need from specialist suppliers for the authentic Bangladeshi ingredients: mustard oil, dried fish, specific chilli varieties, whole spice mixes that you will not find at the supermarket.
The tiger and chillies in our logo are not just decoration. The Royal Bengal Tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, and the chillies represent what sits at the centre of everything we cook. That is who we are.
People often ask what sets a Bangladeshi kitchen apart from the curry house on the high street. The honest answer is: quite a lot. Most of Britain’s “Indian” restaurants are in fact run by Bangladeshi families — many with roots in the Sylhet region — but the familiar formula menu of madras, vindaloo and korma is a British invention. What we cook is closer to what we ate at home.
We cook with pungent mustard oil rather than a neutral vegetable oil, and we temper whole spices at the start of a dish the way our mothers did. Panch phoron — the Bengali five-spice of cumin, fennel, fenugreek, nigella and black mustard seed — goes in whole, not ground into a paste. Spices are ground fresh each morning, so the aroma is brighter and the heat cleaner.
Bangladesh is a delta laced with rivers, so freshwater fish sits at the heart of the food alongside slow-cooked goat and lamb, lentils and greens. That is why our menu carries dishes you will not find on a standard curry-house board — and why the vegetable and fish plates get as much care as the meat.
The uniform brown “base gravy” that many takeaways build every dish from is exactly what we do not do. Each order is cooked individually. It takes a few minutes longer, but the sauces are lighter, the layers of spice stay distinct, and nothing tastes like it came from the same pot as everything else.
9 Bridge Street
Appleby-in-Westmorland
CA16 6QH
Friday – Saturday
5:00 pm – 10:30 pm
Monday – Thursday
5:30 pm – 10:30 pm
Sunday
5:30 pm – 10:00 pm