We visit award-winning Bristol restaurant Urban Tandoor where the staff are becoming TikTok stars

Forget the John Lewis Christmas advert. The big event this month is the next video from Bristol restaurant Urban Tandoor.

This award-winning Indian restaurant has become a TikTok sensation thanks to its brilliantly funny videos featuring members of staff performing classic songs with a curry twist.

Urban Tandoor now has 137,000 followers on TikTok and their videos have been watched by millions of people around the world.

These include a Barbie-influenced ‘Bhaji Girl’ and their hilarious take on The Proclaimers’ I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) - complete with its ‘naan a naan na’ refrain - which generated a staggering 4.5 million views.

Their brilliant version of the Grease song You’re The One That I Want - changed, of course, to You’re The Naan That I Want, has had 3.4 million TikTok views.

And when BristolWorld visited the Whiteladies Road branch of Urban Tandoor, owner Sujith D’almeida revealed that the eagerly anticipated next Urban Tandoor video is on the way.

“We’ve done our own version of YMCA,” says Sujith, who opened the Small Street Urban Tandoor in 2014 before opening Whiteladies Road in 2017.

“The videos were inspired by some of our younger staff who are into things like TikTok and social media and it has really taken off.

“Each video has gone viral and it has been amazing for business as lots of people visit the restaurants having seen the videos.

“In fact, a lot of people now come to the restaurants just to take a picture or their own TikTok of the staff they recognise from our videos so the chefs and waiters are becoming as famous as the food.

"It seems that visitors to Bristol are now putting Urban Tandoor on their sightseeing list along with the Clifton Suspension Bridge!"

Not that the food at Urban Tandoor isn’t already deserving of the multiple awards it has won over the past few years.

It’s authentic food cooked by highly skilled Indian chefs and the menu is a blend of traditional and contemporary.

This week, we tried the chilli monkfish starter - pieces of monkfish marinated in chilli and ginger sautéed with peppers and spring onion finished with tomato chilli sauce. It was pretty fiery but also slightly sweet from the peppers.

For main course, beef sukka was a semi-dry curry with tender beef chunks cooked with fenugreek seed, cardamom, fennel seed and cumin powder thickened with coconut cream and topped with chopped coriander. Rich, medium-spice and delicately spiced, it was a delicious dish.

With the smell of joss sticks in the air and young waiting staff (mainly students from Bristol University), the Whiteladies Road Urban Tandoor is a slightly more relaxed neighbourhood restaurant compared to the Small Street original, which tends to attract the larger groups and parties.

But the food served in both restaurants is pretty much the same and, who knows, you may well be served by one of the stars of those TikTok videos.

The Urban Tandoor YMCA video will be released across the restaurant’s social media channels on November 15.

Urban Tandoor, 211 Whiteladies Road, Bristol, BS8 2XS.