Family recipe for success at the Gulshan

Apr 8 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

As the Gulshan launches its Champagne and Indian tapas bar, Emma Pinch talks to owner Mustafa Rahman about award-winning cuisine

HIS dad gave Liverpudlians their first taste of the Indian sub-continent. The choice was simple. In the early 60s, at the Kohinoor, in Commutation Row, Ahmed Nazir served up hot, medium or mild curry, offered alongside reassuringly bland English staples.

Forty-four years have passed since a diminutive Mustafa Rahman stood at his father’s side learning Bangladeshi cooking, but the pioneering family spirit is still there.

Mustafa and his wife, Salina Rahman, have run The Gulshan restaurant on Aigburth Road for 22 years, starting with one shop front.

Over the years they expanded to three more, and collected a clutch of national accolades, and for the past 10 years have featured in the Michelin guide. Next week, after a five-figure revamp of the whole premises, they open what they believe is the city’s first Champagne and Indian tapas bar, on the first floor of their restaurant.

Mustafa moved to Liverpool from Bangladesh in 1964. Since then, hundreds of Indian restaurants sprang up, he says, and customers are as discriminating about their curry as they are about other cuisines.

“People know what they are eating. Indian restaurants are just like English, Italian and French in that respect, and people will say whether it’s good or bad at a certain place. You can’t serve sub-standard food.”

There’s a trend among Indian restaurants to distinguish themselves with the claim that their meals are “authentic” – the real deal being served up and down high streets in India and Pakistan.

“I really do disagree with this idea that Indian food served in restaurants has been adapted to British taste,” says Mustafa. “That’s rubbish. The only real difference is that, in India and Bangladesh, people eat all meat on the bone because they believe it gives it greater flavour, whereas in this country everything has to be off the bone. Some of the milder dishes served at restaurants, like korma, aren’t cooked at people’s homes because they’re a speciality and awkward to do.

“Even when my father came here in about 1960, he was serving food that was authentic. He served medium curry, hot curry and mild curry, as well as English dishes. It was a new thing that people wanted to try. The Vesta curry that came later introduced something that wasn’t authentic.”

He sticks by his family’s tried and tested formula of using fresh vegetables and herbs from Indian stores, and getting the basic sauce right.

”Although I was very young, I used to help out in my dad’s restaurant and learned from him,” he says. “With Indian cooking, it’s just a matter of someone standing by watching you, and as long as the base is the correct texture and taste then everything else comes easily.

“The base is mainly the onions, with fresh tomatoes, garlic and ginger added. You add water and simmer with bay leaf, cinnamon, cardamom, clove. Before you even add the garam spices, you can smell the flavour of it. Once all that’s done, you add tomato puree and all the other spices. How much of the other spices you add makes the flavour.”

His new tapas floor has its own bar and kitchen, and adds an extra 50 covers to the restaurant. It will serve mini mains and popular starters like bhajis, shish kebab and chicken tikka. With the restaurant already being voted “best in the North” twice in the Good Curry guide, he doesn’t have to chase prizes.

“The Gulshan has been very successful thanks to our customers, and we really wanted to give something back to them,” says Mustafa.

“You just don’t get a tapas bar or a Champagne bar in Indian restaurants in Liverpool, so I wanted to start it.

”It’s come into place exactly how I wanted it. I think my dad would have been proud.”

emma.pinch@dailypost.co.uk