A happy series of coincidences mean that the blog should draw readers’ attention to Glasgow’s growing number of tiffin providers.
In Mumbai, tiffin wallahs or dabbawalas are the kings of the city’s takeaway service. Each day, around 4500-5000 tiffin wallahs collect tiffin boxes, or packed lunch boxes, from people’s homes. They deliver these lunches to workers in central Mumbai and then return the empty boxes in the afternoon ready for the next day.
Each day they make around 200,000 deliveries and, while the use of SMS messaging has crept in, most of the tiffin wallahs use nothing more sophisticated than a bike and colour-coded lunch boxes.
There is an old but well written Guardian piece on the phenomenon here.
Anyway, Cafe India on Albion Street in Glasgow’s Merchant City is getting in on the action. The restaurant has recently come under new ownership and the whole place is undergoing a bit of an overhaul.
As part of the new order, they are launching a tiffin delivery service in central Glasgow. If you want to see what sort of dishes are on offer then they are hosting a sample lunch at the restaurant next Tuesday lunchtime. All of their tiffin options will be free to sample between noon and 2pm.
As it happens, Cafe India are also running a Big Deal today. The full details are here but, essentially, the offer is for two people to each have a drink and share five tapas from the restaurant’s new tapas menu. The cost for two is £20 instead of the standard maximum price of £44.90.
If you fancy a spot of king prawn Punjabi masala then hit the buy now button but you may need to be fast; the deal is proving popular and may sell out.
The blog is not the only one to be inspired by tiffin at the moment. Trampy of the marvelous Trampy and the Tramp’s Glasgow of Curry blog have also been truffling for tiffin and their findings can be read here along with some Pierce Brosnan clips.