Glasgow curry legend Mr Ali of Shish Mahal remembered

His passing was announced by the "devastated and heartbroken" Shish Mahal restaurant on Monday, with the establishment closed for the following 48 hours.

A social media post read: "Verily we belong to Allah, and truly to Him shall we return. Rest In Peace Mr Ali."

Mr Ali's death brought hundreds of tributes from customers, with Shish Mahal firmly established as a Glasgow institution.

Indeed, the Indian dining legend can be said to have helped popularise the cuisine in the city - as well as inventing one of its most iconic dishes.

His father, Noor Mohammed, had opened what is regarded as the city's first proper Indian restaurant, the 'Green Gates’, in nearby Bank Street, in 1959.

The city already had a taste for curry due to its extensive dealings with the Indian subcontinent during the British empire.

In the early 1900s makeshift shacks were erected beside the Clyde to feed the Indian boilermen working on the ships.

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Mr Ali would open the Shish Mahal on Gibson Street in 1964, with curry houses becoming hugely popular with the pub crowd.

The boozers all shut at 10pm so Glaswegians would head to curry houses to keep on drinking.

It was on Gibson street that Mr Ali would invent Britain's most popular curry dish - chicken tikka masala.

He explained in 2009: "We used to make chicken tikka, and one day a customer said, 'I'd take some sauce with that, this is a bit dry'.

"We thought we'd better cook the chicken with some sauce. So from here we cooked chicken tikka with the sauce that contains yogurt, cream, spices.

"It's a dish prepared according to our customer's taste, usually they don't take hot curry, that's why we cook it with yogurt and cream."

By the middle of the 1960s Gibson Street was known as Glasgow's 'curry canyon, with Shish Mahal across the street from Koh-I-Noor, with the Maharajah, the Himalaya and the Shalimar all on the same street.

In 1979, to celebrate the restaurant's 15th birthday, Mr Ali rolled prices back to 1964 levels - resulting in huge queues which stretched well down the street.

It was all part of making the restaurant a true institution.

Asif Ali, Mr Ali's son, told the Glasgow Times: "Dad came to the UK in the late 1950s, about 1958 or 1959 and they were from a very, very, very poor background.

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"When he came here, he started to work for his uncle in the haberdashery business, called Sher Brothers.

“So he would help out and work there during the day, then he also found a place with his dad to open a café and he would work there at night.

"He made Glasgow and Scotland his home, he did not look back.

"He was Glaswegian and Scottish first. He was very, very proud of being Glaswegian, very very proud of being Scottish, and it was very important to him."

The original Shish Mahal closed down in the 1980s after the building began to suffer from subsidence - while rival Koh I Noor actually collapsed into the River Kelvin.

The site is now home to Hillhead Primary School, but it wasn't the end for the iconic Glasgow restaurant.

Shish Mahal relocated to Park Road where it remains to this day.

Though he became known as the king of Glasgow's curry scene, Mr Ali never forgot his humble roots.

Asif Ali continued: "He set up a lot of charities and he donated a lot of money because he was from such humble beginnings.

"He knew what it was to be humble, he knew what it was like to be going through hard times.

“But he loved the restaurant business. He felt the customers were his guests, just like any guests that would come to his house.

"He had an amazing life and he did not wish for anything else.

“He had an amazing family and he had an amazing business.

"All the amazing, kind words and wishes we have had since dad passed on Monday, from social media and emails and telephone calls, we thank every single one that has wished us well."