"My whole life I've heard people saying 'I'm going out for a beer, then for a curry' but nobody has ever put them in the same room," says the chef and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli about his first restaurant, or 'bar with food' as he prefers to call it.
VDeep has just opened for an extended test run in Leith on the site of the former The Vintage bar, and he is aiming to open in Glasgow later this year.
Of course his comments are not entirely true if you think of the gazillions of pints of fizzy lager that sluice through the nation's 12,000 curry houses, but I get his drift. We are talking craft beer, not some mass-produced brew such as Cobra that, in his view: "tastes like sh***.
Growing up in Glasgow 'a chubby Sikh boy frae Bishopbriggs', Singh Kohli told me how he used to drink Guinness. "I was never much drawn to the football culture of Tennent's and McEwan's, though I was quite taken with Belgian beers and wheat beers." Nowadays he's partial to Vindabrew - the cardamom-infused IPA he recently produced with friends at Glasgow's Drygate brewery.
It's one of over a dozen craft beers available on tap at VDeep, and trying it with various curries I am convinced he is on to something. If you reign back the heat just enough to expose the subtle flavours of the food and pair them with a tasty, well-balanced brew that is not too hoppy something magical happens.
For Singh Kohli "the road from Damascus moment was a pint of Runaway American brown ale with some dal makhani." It happened while hosting a pop-up curry and quiz night at The Vintage during the Edinburgh Fringe after years spent dreaming of opening his own restaurant while working for the BBC in London. And trying this same combination myself I have to say it works brilliantly.
Curry and beer is as Indian as the chicken tikka masala you won't find in India. It's a British invention thanks to licensing laws which placed the curry house at the end of the pub crawl because it could serve beer later. So forget phoney Indian brands unless dousing the flames of a fiery Vindaloo, and try home-grown craft beer instead.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article