Thali Cafe – restaurant review

The Thali Café empire has outposts in Montpelier, Totterdown, Easton and Clifton as well as their flagship Southville Thali as the jewel in the crown. It all began on a truck 15 years ago at Glastonbury festival, with the owners dishing up Indian street food. Their mission was to bring the real taste of home cooked Indian street food to the UK.

The first Thali opened in Montpelier shortly after that festival, a bijou cosy corner café which just served veggie food, filled with colourful drape, cushions and bohemian diners. 

In India cooked lunches are eaten thali style from tiffin lunchboxes, a stack of tins with a carry handle, to carry myriad variations of dal, rice, chutney, curry, breads and pudding. These tiffin compartments carry a multi-dish, thali style meal perfectly. Soon after setting up in Bristol Thali offered a Tiffin scheme where you buy a shiny tiffin tin from any of the restaurants and keep using it for take outs.

Currently it costs £27.50 and comes filled with your pick of Thali dishes. Refills start from £9.50 and serve two people. (Top tip: you can also take your tiffin to other restaurants such as Chai Shai in Hotwells, who will gladly fill it up as a takeaway option)

Thali – who have recently won a sustainable restaurant award – uses locally sourced meat, fish, dairy and veg and organic, locally sourced milk and cream. They also make as many products as possible in-house. And their tiffin takeaway scheme must have saved a mountain of cartons being binned over the years. 

Thali’s new menu features specially commissioned dishes by guest chef Meera Sodha. On a recent visit to the Clifton Thali we tried the Meera Sodha specials – great if you’re unsure about which dishes to combine – as they are mini-feasts.  

The Thali experience is also great theatre.  We dined under the dreamy eyes of long dead Indian princes, splendid bejeweled generals and Bollywood stars –who gazed down from big photo portraits on the walls. 

We shared slow cooked, tangy chicken and a firm crispy paneer dish. Plus a great array of veggie salads and side dishes – filled with piquant flavour and crispy and creamy textures to check the heat of the mains. It was a joy to eat fresh, healthy Indian food with fragrant home-cooked flavours. First a mouthful of spicy curry, then refreshing portion of lime sharp salad, contrasted like a jump from a sauna into an icy plunge pool.

Our very quaffable organic Rioja proved good value at £18 for a bottle. Most restaurants charge 3 to 4 times the online price. The super busy waitress was extra helpful with seating and minor menu changes. It was a great meal out at an excellent price. 

For 50 per cent off your food bill at Thali, download the City Munch app and claim this week’s Happy January offer (Jan 16-22). It’s available all day, at all five locations and if you use referral ‘B247’ you can get a further five per cent off your first three orders.

To book, visit www.thethalicafe.co.uk or call 0117 925 9021