Leeds Kirkgate Market – Third Annual Indian Food Festival

Kirkgate Market’s food court hosted a festival of Indian food last Saturday, with around thirty stallholders offering spiced delights to a packed crowd.  Thomas Chalk joined the throng.

It’s a good venue, the food court.  It’s a rare lunchtime that this high-ceilinged room feels at all empty, with an international mix of fare on offer, but still there is space available for pop-up stalls.  Last Saturday’s Indian Food Festival made full use of this – as did the huge crowd – with stalls from restaurants, caterers and home cooks. 

The food of the Indian subcontinent is well-established in the UK, with Leeds hosting its share of everything from the classic over-oily takeaways best suited to late night orders, to hip street food, to finer dining.  Our collective attention increasingly encompasses other Asian cuisines, but there is still more than enough space in our hearts and our bellies for the food of the City’s well-established Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, all out in force at the Festival as both stallholders and punters. 

There were many variations of chaat, street food typically somewhere between a curry and a salad; curries piled on rice or to be scooped with flatbreads; and the occasional sweet offering.  From crunchy pani puri to sponge-like dhokla, from the tang of tamarind to the sweetness of coconut and slowly-cooked onions, there were tastes and textures galore. Many dishes were small in size and price, lending themselves well to browsing, and a lunch-sized plate came in at around £6.  

Corn bhel rosewater and basil

We sampled several dishes.  First, BurmIndian Aroma’s corn bhel, a bowl of sweetcorn enlivened with lemon juice, spring onion, coriander and tomato, with fresh chilli and the warmth of cumin.  A contrasting crunch came from a crispy sev topping. Alongside this, we had rose falooda, a sweet, frothy rose and basil seed drink. Rose isn’t everyone’s favourite flavour, but for me it brought a ray of summer sun to a wet September afternoon.  

Aloo tikki and chana masalla

4 Kitchens, of Chapel Allerton and Ilkley, provided a small plate pairing aloo tikki and chana masala, dressed with tamarind and a yoghurt sauce. The potato patties were soft but with a satisfying bounce when bitten into, lightly spiced though not bland and with a bit of chilli, and the chick peas had more heat from the tomato-based sauce that clung to them.  As with the corn, this was the perfect size as a starter to get the appetite going while leaving room for a trip to another stall.  

Apologies to anyone who was in the queue behind me for the paneer curry at the stall from Kang’s Punjabi Box, as I bought the last portion.  This was the hottest of the dishes I tried, with a gravy that was quite thin without being in any way watery – perfect for soaking into the accompanying rice – and the plate was hearty but not heavy. The curry was distinctly sweet, with a nice balance of spices.  

A Goan chicken curry (sampled by Cath on my behalf to ensure this article doesn’t only focus on vegetarian food – though meat dishes were notably in the minority at the Festival) had a coconut gravy and an accompanying salad of radishes, carrot and red cabbage. It came with a shot of solkadhi, a coconut-based drink with kokum, a fruit related to mangosteens, with a hint of salt; Cath was less keen on this drink, finding the mix of sweet and salt slightly off-putting, but I would happily have had several more.  

After a rest perched on what seemed to be the only bench in the room with any space at all, we decided to make our lunch a three-courser, sharing a bowl of moong daal kheer from Friends’ Kitchen. The combination of milk, sugar and cardamom is common in Indian desserts for good reason, and here the soup-like pudding was thickened with the lentils and dotted with chopped cashews, sultanas and threads of vermicelli. Thick enough to be luxurious while thin enough to be drunk rather than spooned (I checked!), this was the kind of dessert that makes you want more for how delicious it is, but which you know would defeat you a mere mouthful into your second bowl. Perhaps next year I’ll arrive earlier and have my first round of kheer for breakfast.  

Saris and other fabrics on sale

Whether or not you would find anything new at the Festival – I’ve never encountered solkadhi, but everything else was familiar to us, with this being my favourite cuisine – this was great food, celebrating the joys of spice and texture and food that has been an integral part of British cuisine for decades.

Photographs by Cath Kane.

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