Cooking with Chilis' chefs

Out and About writer Carole Elgueta spends a day in the Newbury restaurant's kitchen

CHILIS has been creating quite a stir since it opened four months ago, gaining a reputation as a fun place to go for fine dining Indian style.

The company behind the restaurant, Station Approach, is called Friends United, and was formed by a group of mates from Indian. All aged under 35, they may be young, but they have some good experience behind them, having learnt their trades in a country renowned for its high standards of hospitality, Switzerland.

Newbury is Friends United's first UK venture and manager Krishna Vangala said that they chose it not just because they felt it was a good place to open the restaurant, but because he thought it was a nice area to bring up his young family.

"There's quite a lot of Indian restaurants around here, so the people of Newbury must like curry," he said. "But we are offering something different, dishes that people may not have tried before, as well as our way of doing some of the traditional favourites.

"We have all been very busy setting this up, but I do try to get out and about with my family as we think this is a lovely place to be."

In our video, chefs Karan Vontadhu and Santosh Gandra show you how to cook tandoori mushrooms and prawns and a chicken sizzler.

To read the full article, see this week's Out and About magazine, free inside the Newbury Weekly News, or click on the Out and About section for the online edition.