Neil Patel was just eight when he started cooking alongside his grandmother as she served dishes at the temple where the family worshipped. By the age of 12 he was cooking at events –including catering a wedding for 3,000 people.
Little wonder, then, that the budding chef blossomed into an entrepreneur at the helm of one of Cardiff's most-loved restaurants – even if it meant constant 4am starts and budgets so tight the family initially had to buy just one table a week from Ikea to furnish their venue. Now, more than two decades on from those formative years cooking at his grandmother's elbow, Neil's restaurant Vegetarian Food Studio has been a mainstay of the Grangetown community for nearly 20 years.
Beloved by locals and having gained many loyal customers over the years the Penarth Road restaurant and takeaway has also won national recognition in The Sunday Times, Guardian, and Daily Telegraph for its food. If it's ever crossed your mind that a vegetarian diet could be limiting the restaurant's extensive menu is here to prove you wrong. With more than 100 dishes to choose from there's something for all tastes with both southern and northern Indian dishes on the menu.
READ MORE: 24 of the best pictures from Cardiff's colourful Butetown Carnival
It's something that owner and head chef Neil has been cultivating since childhood. Now 42, he learnt how to cook for large groups of people from his grandmother, Sharda, and now offers catering for events for between 25 and 2,000 people. But before the restaurant even opened in 2003 the Patels had been providing their catering services to the Cardiff community.
“My son was eight years of age when he started going with his grandmother to cook for the community at our temple in Cardiff,” said Neil's dad Jim. “That’s where people encouraged him to start cooking.”
Neil began cooking in earnest when he was just 12 years old and sometimes made meals for hundreds or even thousands of people – including 3,000 people at a wedding at Rumney Hall. "Cooking at the back of a garage, cooking in garden sheds, cooking in church halls," said Neil. "We'd go as a family and we'd be helping [my grandmother] out. This is going back many, many years – the late 80s, early 90s. She was the main person that taught me the basics.
"Food-wise I was probably a bit too young to realise what we were doing. Our main food at that time was samosas – we used to supply them to shops on a Monday, Wednesday, and a Friday." Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, therefore, were cooking days.
“He’s very, very particular about his food,” Jim said of his son. At 18 Neil went to study catering at Birmingham University's College of Food and Science before setting up the restaurant but even as a student he would come back to Cardiff on occasional weekends to cook.
Jim said: “He used to come on the weekends and he used to make samosas and onion bhajis. I used to take him to the corner shops to deliver them. He used to get up on Sunday morning at five o’clock or four o’clock in the morning, make his food, take the train back to Birmingham at seven o’clock, and get to university for nine o’clock.
“For three years he did that and he saved some money and then he bought his first restaurant in Penarth Road in Cardiff. He bought that with the savings he’d made at university.” They family initially purchased a site at 95 Penarth Road, taking over the former Crusty's sandwich bar and initially operating as a small takeaway and deli counter.
Neil built up his experience by working part-time in hotel kitchens, including at the Cardiff Bay Hotel and the Hilton in Newport, alongside running Vegetarian Food Studio. Running his own restaurant was something he had wanted to do since he was 16 years old. "That was my main goal, to open my own restaurant, so you can be your own manager really," said Neil, adding he was also encouraged by the A* he attained in food technology at GCSE.
“There was nobody in Cardiff cooking vegetarian food, Indian vegetarian food,” Jim explained. The family decided to open the restaurant around the corner from their temple in Grangetown “so all the Indian people can come and eat here”. Noticing the gap in the market for vegetarian and vegan food and the demand for dine-in tables the family then purchased their current larger site at 115 Penarth Road, transforming it to bring their food to more communities in Cardiff.
"Money was an issue so we bought our first table from Ikea," Neil said. "To save money we bought a table a week from Ikea so that we could save up." Neil said that initially setting up Vegetarian Food Studio was "very hard".
"Going back 20-odd years ago not many people were vegetarians, not many people were vegan. Obviously you'd get our Asian minority who are vegetarian but the Westerners were more meat-eaters than vegetarians so at those times it was hard. But as time went on people started to turn vegetarian and vegan. That's when we started to see more Western people coming through the doors and enjoying the food."
Jim added: “In those days, in 2003, the restaurant wasn’t as well-known in the marketplace but it travelled by word of mouth because our food was so good. The food we serve is authentic food, homemade food.” With Neil cooking in the kitchen and grandma Sharda, who's now 81, lending a helping hand the family initially started selling curries with rice and samosas. But, as their reputation grew through word of mouth, more and more customers started coming to the restaurant.
It wasn't long before the restaurant's reputation grew and by 2004 Vegetarian Food Studio had landed its first award from the South Wales Echo in recognition of their food – and the awards haven't stopped coming since. “Since then we’ve got 23 awards so far,” Jim said. “We’ve got so many awards I can’t list them all.”
Neil said he was "chuffed" with the amount of awards the restaurant has been able to pick up over the years. "It's hard to stay in the market," he said. "It's the quality of the food it boils down to. It's not what the looks of the restaurant or the looks of the chef is – the main thing is what's on the plate and what tastes good."
The success, though, is the culmination of a rather more painful journey. The Patel family arrived in Cardiff 50 years ago under incredibly difficult circumstances. It was 1972 and the family, who had been living in Uganda, were among those expelled from the country under Idi Amin's regime. Jim was just 12 years old when he arrived in Cardiff with his family.
"I was a very young boy at the time but I have a very good memory of it. It was a disaster, like Ukraine," Jim said. "When we had to go to the airport there was a checkpoint and we were at gunpoint. They were taking everything off us." Amin had ordered the expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority that year and gave them just 90 days to leave the country. Around 27,000 of those expelled from the country emigrated to the UK. Jim said that when his family arrived in Cardiff it was initially "very hard".
"When we came to Cardiff from Uganda we had malaria and we were put in Llandaff hospital. Malaria was a very new thing to British doctors. It was very difficult but the staff were very supportive. Then we started school and it went slowly but surely," he said. The council gave the family furniture to help them settle into their new home.
Jim said the Cardiff of today is very different to the city he and his family moved to "without a penny" in the 1970s: “It has changed completely from what it was to what it is today. When I came to Cardiff chips were two-and-a-half pence – you know, halfpenny, two-penny. My first property I bought for £6,000 on Mardy Street and today that same property is about £400,000.”
Given the circumstances under which his family came to Wales Jim feels justifiably "very proud and very happy" to see the success of their business today. He added: "I'm very happy to be part of Wales. We've been part of Wales since we came here – it's 50 years just gone now since we came to Cardiff. We're very happy and proud to be in Cardiff."
Vegetarian Food Studio has not only been recognised for its food in Cardiff and Wales but was also named as the UK’s best vegetarian and vegan restaurant at the Asian Curry Awards in 2019 and 2021, fighting off some tough competition. “I’m very proud of it and it’s thanks to our customers for getting us all these awards. It’s going from strength to strength,” Jim said.
While Sharda no longer helps out in the kitchen Jim said she is still on hand to supervise in the restaurant. “She’s not helping to make the chapattis anymore – she used to do that but she supervises,” he added.
The business is now approaching 20 years of being a stalwart eatery in Grangetown and the business has expanded to cater for weddings with Jim also hoping to expand into producing frozen meals in the future. “All the English people are coming to try our Indian vegetarian food. People love it,” Jim said.
For Neil, the main thing he has learnt from cooking with his grandmother is to not waste food. "Going through the years she's told us and taught us if we hadn't learnt how to not waste we would be struggling," he said. "We're not wasting food – we're making our money, we've become more efficient.
"We've grown from nothing to what we are now though it's taken us 20-odd years. We've gone through some bad times but we've got to a good level in the market."
Neil said that working with his family is "really good", adding: "With staff you've got to keep two eyes open but with family you've got no headache." And i t looks like Vegetarian Food Studio will continue to be a family business for years to come. Neil said: "My eldest son is probably going to join the team as well. He wants to become a chef."
READ NEXT:
