Bengal Lounge Wetherby victorious at English Curry Awards 2025

National World - LocalTV

We meet Bhoktiar Hussain and the team at Bengal Lounge Wetherby who won the 'Local Restaurant of the Year Outstanding Achievement Award' at the English Curry Awards 2025.

Transcript

00:00With restaurants across Leeds and Yorkshire winning big at the English Curry Awards 2025,

00:06we visited Bengal Lounge in Wetherby, who have been reflecting on their

00:09Local Restaurant of the Year Outstanding Achievement Award,

00:13while showing us how they prepare their signature dish.

00:16Since we work in my first job in food industry, in restaurant,

00:20and since we work in then I had an ambition to open a business.

00:25In 2014, I met Chef in another restaurant, and then we planned to open a business.

00:35I really would like to give thanks to the people of Wetherby and the surrounding area.

00:41They are supporting us since we opened our door in 2015,

00:46and through the COVID time they also support us, which was a hard time for everyone.

00:52We are really grateful to the people of Wetherby.

00:57We prepared a dish today called Noa Abikhana, which is a very, very good dish.

01:04It's a signature dish.

01:06It's loads of spice involved to it.

01:09It's called the 21 spice combined together.

01:12We use a plate of chicken, cooked in the tandoori first,

01:16and then re-cooked in the pan with 21 spices.

01:20And it's not that spicy, it's medium spicy.

01:23My dad's been working at Benga Lounge for, you know, quite a while.

01:26He's always been in the food industry.

01:29I used to go to college, and then I wanted to work here for a little bit

01:32just to get, you know, see how, what he does.

01:35I came, I was working about part-time for just a little bit,

01:39and then I gradually liked it, and then I just went into full-time.

01:43It's really nice working here with the team members,

01:45and especially Varit Bahadad as well, to seeing, you know,

01:48how he brought this all up, and then, you know,

01:51everything that he had done for us, where it actually came from.

01:56He's been cooking for, since...

01:5815.

02:0015, you know, that's...

02:02And he's 15 now.

02:03And now he's 50.

02:04He's been cooking for a long time.

02:06And it's given us more inspiration to work harder, you know,

02:10and it's, honestly, it's really hard to provide good food

02:15and good quality service to make them, make local people happy.

02:20And we don't need...

02:21And local people are giving our, every time, our feedback.

02:26All the wars that we've been to, they always call it a competition,

02:30but we don't see it as a competition.

02:32We like working with everybody, you know,

02:34we want everybody to gain the same awards as us.

02:37You know, all the restaurants, we would like to inspire them

02:41to get the same amount of awards, you know,

02:43the same amount of busyness, the customer love, all the support.

02:47As much as we deserve this award, our customer deserves the same.

02:52Without our customer, this establishment is nothing.

02:55So we are really grateful, again,

02:57to the people of Weatherby and surrounding area.

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