Sheffield’s oldest Indian restaurant Ashoka is now opening its doors during the day for something completely new. Launched on Thursday 27 August, FIGUE™ is a new LunchBrunch® concept built around the food owner Rahul Amin grew up eating.
FIGUE stands for “Food I Grew Up Eating”, but don’t expect a cliched tour through traditional Indian cooking. This is personal, playful food shaped by a Gujarati Indian home, a Sheffield upbringing and the glorious chaos that happens when the corner shop, the family kitchen and the morning after all collide.
The result is LunchBrunch®: not breakfast, not quite lunch, and definitely not another predictable parade of smashed avocado.
FIGUE takes over Ashoka every Thursday to Sunday between 11am and 2pm, serving a hotchpotch of breakfast, lunch and all-day snacks. Some dishes are rooted firmly in the food Rahul remembers; others have been made up through necessity, curiosity or the simple belief that they would taste delicious.
The menu moves from Gujarati street-food favourites to unapologetically Sheffield born inventions. There’s khaman: soft, savoury steamed chickpea cake finished with a fragrant tempering. Vada pav brings spiced potato, chutneys and chilli together inside a soft bun, while papdi no lot offers a comforting Gujarati rice-flour dish rarely spotted on British Indian restaurant menus.
Then things take a turn.
The Corner Shop Chaat transforms familiar snack-aisle flavours with various chutneys and crispy bits. The [Mc]Chicken Keema Egg & Cheese Muffin is exactly the kind of cross-cultural breakfast engineering its name suggests: chicken keema, egg and melted cheese bundled into a muffin to create what may be Sheffield’s newest hangover cure.
Rahul explains: “This is food that’s Indian without being trapped by tradition, British without trying too hard to prove it, and Sheffield through and through.”
FIGUE also marks a new chapter for Ashoka, the Ecclesall Road institution that has been feeding the city since 1967. The last lunch service was in 1976 – they thought 50 years was enough of a wait to bring it back. Rather than simply opening for a conventional lunch service, the team has created a separate identity with its own menu, mood and point of view, one that connects the restaurant’s history with the way Sheffield wants to eat now.
Come hungry, slightly hungover or simply curious.
FIGUE™ runs every Thursday to Sunday, from 11am until 2pm.Reservations can be made at www.ashoka1967.com. Follow @figue_shf for menus, dishes and updates.
