Shaan Tandoori Indian Takeaway

Shaan Tandoori is one of two takeaways on the small St Ninians Place parade in Brechin — a short row of units just off the main route through the south of the Angus royal burgh, with a Chinese takeaway in the adjacent unit. The shop trades as an independent Indian takeaway with a printed menu and online ordering through its own shaantakeaway.com site.

The kitchen runs to the Bangladeshi-British curry-house tradition that defines small-town Scottish Indian takeaways: starters of samosa, onion bhaji, chicken chaat and chicken pakora at the front of the menu, the long curry list of korma, dhansak, pasanda, bhuna, balti, madras and vindaloo grades, a tandoori section for the sizzling-plate orders and a biryani section served with separate vegetable curry. Trade is phone-and-collect with delivery to the residential streets across Brechin — the kind of single-counter operation a small burgh sustains rather than the busy delivery-platform model of larger towns.

St Ninians Place sits a short walk from the Brechin Cathedral and Round Tower — the 10th-11th-century Irish-style round tower at the heart of the burgh, one of only two such towers in Scotland (the other at Abernethy in Perthshire) and the closest the town comes to a national landmark.