The Best Indian Restaurants in Glasgow City Centre
Glasgow has been the Curry Capital of Britain four times. The city centre alone holds award-winning North Indian institutions, modern street-food brands, two Coeliac UK accredited South Indian kitchens, and authentic regional restaurants you would otherwise need to travel to find. This is our honest guide to six of them — written by the team at Dakhin, on Candleriggs since 2004.
- 6 restaurants Glasgow city centre
- Written by Peet Dakhin founder
- Independently researched May 2026
What is the best Indian restaurant in Glasgow city centre?
Glasgow city centre has six notable Indian restaurants worth knowing about. For South Indian cuisine and a fully gluten-free kitchen, Dakhin on Candleriggs has been the city's specialist since 2004 and is one of a small number of Coeliac UK accredited Indian restaurants in Scotland. For award-winning North Indian and Indo-Persian cooking, Koolba next door has won the Curry Capital of Britain title and remains a Merchant City favourite. For a modern Indian street-food experience with a national following, Mowgli on St Vincent Street is the considered choice. The full guide below compares all six on cuisine, price, dietary options and what each does best.
How This Guide Was Put Together
There are dozens of Indian restaurants in Glasgow. This guide focuses on six that we believe represent the best of the city centre's Indian dining scene across different styles, price points and dietary needs.
Location
Every restaurant featured is in Glasgow city centre or on its immediate edge — Merchant City, the Buchanan Street area, or the Finnieston border. Each is walkable from Buchanan Street, Central Station or Queen Street.
Distinctive identity
We deliberately chose restaurants that each offer something different — North Indian, South Indian, Indo-Persian, modern street food. There is no point recommending six versions of the same menu.
Consistent quality
Each restaurant has a sustained reputation across Tripadvisor, Google reviews, and the Glasgow food press over multiple years — not a single viral moment.
Dietary inclusivity
Where a restaurant is genuinely set up for coeliac, vegan, or other dietary needs, we say so. Where it's not, we say that too.
A note on bias: Dakhin is one of the six restaurants featured here. We've tried to be honest about where the others do something we don't, and we've put the alphabetically and historically obvious lead — Mother India — at the top of the list rather than ourselves. Read this with that context. If we've got something wrong about one of the other restaurants, email info@dakhin.com and we'll correct it.
The Best Indian Restaurants in Glasgow City Centre
Mother India
Mother India is the closest thing Glasgow has to a national Indian restaurant institution. Opened in 1990 by Monir and Smeena Mohammed in a former tenement at the western edge of the city centre, it built its reputation on something simple: authentic North Indian home cooking, served in a setting that felt like a proper dining room rather than a curry house. The model has since expanded — Mother India's Cafe on Argyle Street pioneered the Indian tapas format, and the Mother India family of restaurants now includes several Glasgow outposts and one in Edinburgh.
For the original restaurant on Westminster Terrace, the appeal is the cooking itself. The kitchen leans into Punjabi and broader North Indian traditions — slow-cooked karahis, fresh-baked breads, well-spiced vegetable dishes — without overcomplicating things. It has appeared in national good food guides, was once visited by Anthony Bourdain, and has been a fixture of Glasgow's curry scene for so long that local critics tend to use it as the benchmark against which other Indian restaurants in the city are measured.
What to order: The Lamb Karahi, the daily vegetable specials (which change seasonally), and the home-style chicken dishes are where the kitchen is at its strongest.
Best for: Traditional North Indian cooking, occasions where you want a Glasgow classic rather than a newer concept.
Coeliac / gluten free: Some gluten-free options on the menu; not a dedicated gluten-free kitchen.
Dakhin
Dakhin opened on Candleriggs in 2004 as the first restaurant in Scotland dedicated to the food of southern India — specifically the regional traditions of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. The cooking is built on rice, lentils, coconut and curry leaves rather than wheat and cream, which gives the menu a noticeably different character to the North Indian restaurants Glasgow is better known for.
Dosas, idlis, sambhar, Chettinad-style curries, Kerala monkfish and Andhra-style lamb sit alongside dishes that simply do not appear elsewhere in the city. The first-floor dining room sits directly opposite the City Halls concert venue, with an open-plan kitchen and a view across Merchant City Square.
Because South Indian cooking is naturally low in wheat and dairy, the kitchen was already most of the way to being gluten-free from day one. In May 2018, after removing the last wheat-based items, the restaurant was independently audited and became Coeliac UK accredited — making Dakhin one of the few Indian restaurants in Scotland to hold the accreditation. The kitchen is also fully nut free, which makes Dakhin a rare option in the city for diners managing both coeliac disease and a nut allergy. Staff are not permitted to bring gluten-containing items on site at all — a level of control that goes beyond the usual "we'll do our best" reassurance.
Two decades on, the dining room is still run by Peet and the original family team. Dakhin has appeared in the Michelin Guide, the Sunday Times, the Sunday Herald and the Metro. The restaurant is currently ranked #109 of 2,253 restaurants in Glasgow on Tripadvisor with a 4.5-star rating across more than 840 reviews. A pattern runs through those reviews: many describe Dakhin as the first restaurant where, as a coeliac, they have been able to order anything they wanted from the menu without asking what's safe.
"Coeliac heaven. The only restaurant I know I can feel totally safe in. The food is absolutely delicious. Paper dosa is a must at every visit."
— TheFork review, Dakhin
What to order: The Paper Dosa (a crisp two-foot fermented rice and lentil crêpe), Chettinad Koli (Tamil pepper-spiced chicken), Mamsam Lamb (slow-cooked Andhra-style lamb), Gutti Vankaya Masala (Telangana baby aubergines, vegan).
Best for: South Indian regional cooking, coeliac and gluten-free diners, groups with mixed dietary needs, dosa first-timers, pre-theatre dining for the City Halls and Concert Hall.
Coeliac / gluten free: 100% gluten-free and nut-free kitchen. Coeliac UK accredited since May 2018.
dakhin.com · Dakhin's menu · Coeliac UK accredited gluten-free menu
Koolba
Koolba sits directly next door to Dakhin on Candleriggs and is one of the most decorated Indian restaurants in Scotland. Opened in 2002, it has represented Glasgow at the annual Curry Capital of Britain awards on multiple occasions and was named Best Curry Restaurant in Britain in 2015. The cooking is broadly North Indian — Punjabi-leaning curries, freshly baked breads, well-built tandoor dishes — with a distinctive Persian grill influence that you don't find at most other Indian restaurants in Glasgow.
The dining room is more formal than the casual-tapas places further west, and the kitchen takes the awards seriously: ingredients are sourced carefully, dishes are properly composed, and service is attentive without being fussy. For diners who want a classic North Indian dining experience in Merchant City — and an extensive wine list to match — Koolba is the obvious choice.
What to order: Persian-influenced grilled dishes from the tandoor, the lamb karahi, and the chana puri.
Best for: Award-winning North Indian cooking, occasion dining, Indo-Persian grill plates.
Coeliac / gluten free: Some gluten-free options available; not a dedicated gluten-free kitchen.
Mowgli Street Food
Mowgli is the Glasgow outpost of a national restaurant group founded by Nisha Katona MBE, the barrister-turned-restaurateur whose Indian street-food concept started in Liverpool in 2014 and has since expanded to more than twenty cities. The Glasgow site opened in April 2022 in a soaring former bank building on St Vincent Street, kitted out with the brand's signature vine-wrapped trees, swing seats and amber lighting — a look inspired by a temple courtyard in Varanasi. The menu is built around small plates and tiffins — house keema, treacle tamarind fries, yoghurt chaat bombs, sticky wings — designed for sharing rather than the traditional starter-main-dessert format.
The cooking is deliberately lighter than the cream-heavy curry-house tradition, with fresh chillies, tamarind and toasted cumin doing more work than cream and butter. It is also one of the better Glasgow city centre options for vegan and vegetarian diners — a significant proportion of the menu is meat-free, clearly marked, and treated as a first-class part of the offering rather than an afterthought. There's also a non-gluten menu available on request.
What to order: Mowgli House Keema, treacle tamarind fries, the Street Food Sharer for groups.
Best for: Groups, vegan and vegetarian diners, casual dining, late-night food, anyone who finds traditional curry houses heavy.
Coeliac / gluten free: Non-gluten menu available; not a dedicated gluten-free kitchen.
Madurai
Madurai opened in May 2024 in the ground floor of the Hatrack Building, the distinctive 1899 art nouveau tower designed by James Salmon II. It is the newer of Glasgow's two South Indian-focused restaurants, taking its name from the temple city of Madurai in Tamil Nadu, and is Coeliac UK accredited with a fully gluten-free kitchen. The menu leans on rice, lentils, coconut and tamarind in keeping with South Indian tradition.
The dining room is bright and modern, with green and gold interiors, and a menu that includes thalis, dosas, biryanis and a noted seafood section featuring Scottish monkfish and tiger prawns prepared in South Indian styles. Pricing sits in the same range as the rest of this guide, with good-value lunch and pre-theatre set menus.
What to order: The dosas, Inji Lamb (paprika, ginger and black pepper), Chutta Monkfish from the grill.
Best for: Coeliac and gluten-free diners looking for a second South Indian option, modern South Indian cooking, the Hatrack Building setting.
Coeliac / gluten free: 100% gluten-free kitchen. Coeliac UK accredited.
Banana Leaf
Banana Leaf is the city centre sibling of a long-standing South Indian operation that originally opened in Glasgow's west end in 2008. The St Vincent Street site opened in early 2023 in a basement space, with the original chef Suren continuing to lead the kitchen. The cooking is unselfconsciously authentic: Chettinad-style curries, lamb chukka, rava dosa, prawn chettinadu, and a small range of South Indian breads. Prices are notably lower than the rest of this guide — this is the casual end of the spectrum, not the occasion end.
What makes Banana Leaf worth knowing about is the BYOB policy (free corkage) and the fact that the food is genuinely the food, not a softened version of it. For diners who already know South Indian cooking and want it served without ceremony, this is the most direct option in the city centre. For first-timers, the menu is less guided than at Dakhin or Madurai but the staff will help.
What to order: Lamb Chukka, Chettinad-style curries, the rava dosa, fresh filter coffee.
Best for: Casual, lower-budget South Indian, BYOB diners, anyone who already knows the cuisine and wants it served plainly.
Coeliac / gluten free: Many dishes are naturally gluten-free, but not a dedicated gluten-free kitchen and no formal accreditation.
Glasgow City Centre Indian Restaurants Compared
| Restaurant | Cuisine | Founded | Coeliac UK | 100% GF Kitchen | Vegan Options | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mother India | North Indian | 1990 | No | No | Some | Glasgow classic |
| Dakhin | South Indian | 2004 | Yes | Yes | Extensive | Coeliac & South Indian |
| Koolba | Indo-Persian | 2002 | No | No | Some | Award-winning North Indian |
| Mowgli | Modern street food | 2022 (Glasgow) | No | No | Extensive | Groups & casual dining |
| Madurai | South Indian | 2024 | Yes | Yes | Extensive | Modern South Indian |
| Banana Leaf | South Indian | 2023 (city centre) | No | No | Extensive | Casual, BYOB |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Indian restaurant in Glasgow city centre?
It depends on what you want. For traditional North Indian cooking and a Glasgow classic, Mother India is the obvious choice. For South Indian food and a fully gluten-free kitchen, Dakhin on Candleriggs has been the city's specialist since 2004. For award-winning Indo-Persian cooking, Koolba next door has won Curry Capital of Britain. For modern Indian street food, Mowgli on St Vincent Street is the considered option.
Which Indian restaurants in Glasgow are Coeliac UK accredited?
Two Indian restaurants in Glasgow city centre are Coeliac UK accredited: Dakhin on Candleriggs (accredited since 2018) and Madurai on St Vincent Street. Both have fully gluten-free kitchens, which means coeliac diners can order anything from the menu without cross-contamination risk.
What is the oldest Indian restaurant in Merchant City?
Dakhin on Candleriggs is the longest-running South Indian restaurant in Merchant City, having opened in 2004. Koolba, immediately next door at 109-113 Candleriggs, opened in 2002 and is the longest-running Indian restaurant in the Merchant City area overall.
What's the difference between North Indian and South Indian food?
North Indian cooking — the style most Glasgow curry houses serve — tends to be built around wheat-based breads (naan, paratha, roti), cream and yoghurt-thickened sauces, and tandoor-cooked meats. South Indian cooking, by contrast, is built around rice, lentils, coconut, tamarind and curry leaves. Dishes like dosas, idlis, sambhar and coconut-based curries are South Indian staples and are naturally gluten-free in their original recipes.
Where in Glasgow city centre can I find vegetarian or vegan Indian food?
All six restaurants in this guide have vegetarian options, but the strongest vegetarian and vegan menus are at Dakhin (South Indian cuisine has one of the deepest vegetarian traditions in the world), Mowgli (large vegan section, clearly marked), Madurai, and Banana Leaf. South Indian restaurants generally have a deeper vegetarian repertoire than North Indian ones.
Are any Glasgow Indian restaurants Michelin starred?
No Indian restaurant in Glasgow currently holds a Michelin star. Several have appeared in the Michelin Guide as recommended restaurants, including Dakhin and Mother India, but star status remains rare for Indian restaurants in Scotland generally.
Which Glasgow Indian restaurants are walking distance from Buchanan Street and Central Station?
Five of the six restaurants in this guide are within a 10-minute walk of Buchanan Street and Glasgow Central Station: Dakhin and Koolba on Candleriggs, and Mowgli, Madurai and Banana Leaf on St Vincent Street. Mother India on Westminster Terrace is a 20-25 minute walk west, or a short taxi.
Visit Dakhin in Merchant City
If a fully gluten-free South Indian kitchen — Coeliac UK accredited, family-run since 2004 — is what you're looking for, we'd be delighted to welcome you to Dakhin on Candleriggs.