The Dhalings of vegan food

The concept of dark kitchens, also known as ghost kitchens or cloud kitchens,was created to meet the demand for food on delivery platforms.

They focus solely on preparing meals for takeaway and delivery with no dining areas or waiters needed.

Now their popularity is booming with diners able to order a wide array of mouthwatering food to be delivered to their door with just few taps on their phone.

Among those who have embraced the concept is Wolverhampton chef and food consultant Nitisha Patel, who has created Dhalings Kitchen with co-founders Jamil Shabir and Edwin Ladd.

Based in Birmingham, it serves plant-based South Asian meals, which customers can choose to have delivered to homes across the city and parts of the Black Country or pick up themselves.

Nitisha has been working in the food industry since she was 16 and started her own food consultancy business in 2017.

The 33-year-old has also published two cookery books - My Modern Indian Kitchen and The Delicious Book Of Dhal.

The latter contains an array of vegan and vegetarian recipes showcasing lentils as the focal ingredient for starters, snacks, main meals and desserts.

The popularity of the dishes in her second book, along with the impact of the Covid pandemic on the food industry, helped to inspire Nitisha's new venture.

The award-winning chef says opening a cloud kitchen seemed the best way to share her food with a wider audience

"When the pandemic hit, my business just stopped. I do catering for events and that stopped. I do consultancy for restaurants and develop new recipes for them but all the restaurants closed. I had no income from my product development work because food factories had some of the highest number of Covid cases so I couldn't go in.

"All through my career people have said you should open a restaurant. I've thought about it but there are costs involved. With a cloud kitchen, there is no restaurant, just a kitchen. We cook food and there are drivers who deliver it.

"The Delicious Book Of Dhal did really well. People said 'why don't you bring that to life'. They wanted to taste the dhal," explains Nitisha.

With the perfect opportunity arising during lockdown, she set to work on turning this vision into a reality with Jimil and Edwin.

Originally the Dhalings team planned to be ready to take their first orders early this year but delays with building work meant they didn't open until July.

"We opened during the hottest week of the year. Lockdown had lifted so there wasn't the demand for takeaways as people were going out in the sun," explains Nitisha, who graduated from the College of Food at University College Birmingham in 2011.

But, despite a slow start, orders soon picked up and the business has been going from strength to strength. Dhalings Kitchen recently won the Start Up Business Of The Year title at the Birmingham Awards. The judges said: "Despite the challenges to the hospitality industry, Dhalings have been able to successfully launch this new brand and have achieved a good level of success in such a short period of time."

Nitisha says they were delighted to win the award which was presented during a ceremony at the Eastside Rooms in Birmingham. "It was a complete shock. I thought we were so new that we hadn't done enough to win."

The Dhalings menu promises "food that takes you on a journey from the comfort of your own home" and includes dishes such as kala channa masala, which contains brown chickpeas and potatoes simmered in a spiced thin tomato broth style sauce.

Other mains include four different dhals, such as the kale and coconut toor dhal, and chicken-less kadhai with peppers and onions in a punchy and mildly spiced stir fried tomato sauce.

There are also starters and sides including masala keema fries, samosa chaat, vegan naan and dips.

One of Nitisha's favourites is the thali wali which is a platter made up of two vegan curries, one naan bread, one dhal, basmati rice and a selection of papads.

Food can either be delivered to homes in Birmingham, Walsall and Wednesbury or picked up directly from the kitchen in Windsor Street, Birmingham.

When founding the business, it was important to the team that it operated in an environmentally friendly way so all of the packaging used for the meals is plastic free and can either be recycled or composted.

Plans for the future include a food struck so they can take their popular dishes on the road to events and a recipe book inspired by the kitchen's menu.

Dhalings has received glowing feedback from customers so far, earning a string of five-star reviews on Google. "I'm on cloud nine at the moment getting all these good reviews," says Nitisha.

"We want to put the Midlands on the map for great-tasting, authentic food. It's the food I grew up with. It's not fancy, Michelin Star food, it's good homecooked food. A lot of people still can't believe it's vegan, especially the naan which normally have butter, ghee and egg in. We just use coconut milk and people are really shocked at that. It's fantastic people really like the food, you can't put a price on that."

See dhalings.co.uk