Singh's Indian Street Food: Customers flood back to Leeds restaurant as it reopens following 'heartbreaking' fire

Cousins Harvinder and Harmeet Singh founded Singh’s Indian Street Food in 2018, serving a variety of Indian street food snacks, curries and tandoori dishes.

The Sheepscar restaurant was hit by a blaze in July, which started from a fryer in the kitchen, and five engines were sent out to the scene.

Despite the best efforts of chefs to put out the fire, it spread to a storage room above the restaurant.

Miraculously, no damage was caused to the restaurant itself and after six weeks of repairs Singh’s is now back open.

Harvinder and Harmeet rushed down to the restaurant as soon as they heard about the fire and told the Yorkshire Evening Post that they feared the worst.

Havinder, 42, said: “I was off work as I’d just had a little boy.

“One of my chefs told me there was a fire and they were trying everything to put it out. They did their best.

“When the fire brigade came, there was no fire in the kitchen - it was only upstairs in the storeroom.

“When I saw the smoke, we were heartbroken.

“The firefighters gave us permission to go inside at 6am and we just thanked God. It wasn’t as bad as we thought.

“Nothing was damaged in the restaurant, it was only on the first floor where we had storage.

“We had no other option but to get back open. And we paid everything from our pockets.”

Harvinder was born in New Delhi and always dreamed of becoming a chef, but struggled to break into the competitive industry as a teenager.

He moved to the UK to study and got a job at an Indian sweet shop, before working at Tharavadu and the former Red Hot World Buffet.

After his friends begged him to make more of his delicious street food snacks, he started a catering business from home - before opening Singh’s with Harmeet.

“My cousin always wanted to open a restaurant so he pushed me to do it,” Harvinder said.

“Our food is as it says - Indian street food.

“We always keep our focus on street food, things you can find in New Delhi, lots of variety of chaat, burgers, and amritsari kulcha, dishes which are quite popular in Punjab.

“We have curries and everything, but people like coming here to try all kinds of chaat.”

The Singh’s street food menu includes crunchy okra, an allu tikki burger with spicy potatoes and chutney, chicken Kathi rolls and samosa bites.

There’s lots of varieties of chaat – a savoury snack traditionally served from stalls and food carts in India – as well as mains such as chicken masala curry, butter chicken, Punjabi chole and saag aloo.

Around 90 cent of Singh’s customers are Indian, Harvinder said, and the dishes are packed with spice and flavour.

And those loyal customers have rallied around the restaurant since it reopened last week.

Harvinder added: “They called me to ask what happened and when we were going to open.

“We have been very busy since we opened. We are growing fast.”