Indian Restaurants in Leamington Spa: The Full Picture

Leamington Spa's Indian restaurants each tend to have their own angle - some lean into a broad, familiar curry-house menu, others specialise more narrowly. This is a look at where that variety sits, and specifically where Herb fits into it.

The broader picture

Most Indian restaurants in the UK, Leamington Spa included, draw heavily on North Indian and Punjabi-style cooking - rich gravies, naan, tandoori grills. It's a familiar, popular style, and there's a reason for that popularity, but it's also just one regional tradition within a much larger cuisine.

Where Herb specialises instead

Herb focuses specifically on Kerala cuisine - India's southwest coast - which works from a different base entirely: coconut oil rather than ghee, curry leaves and mustard seed tempered into most dishes, and rice and lentils rather than wheat and dairy as the everyday staple. It's a narrower menu than a general Indian restaurant, but a more consistent one.

A fully vegetarian kitchen

Beyond the cuisine itself, Herb is also unusual locally in being entirely vegetarian - not a restaurant with a vegetarian section, but one built around it from the start, with most dishes vegan or easily made so.

What to try if you're comparing styles

If you've mostly had North Indian food and want to understand what makes Kerala cooking different, a dosa or a Kerala thali are the two clearest entry points - see our dosa guide and thali guide for more detail.

Visit Herb on Clarendon Avenue

Herb is at 5-6 York House, Clarendon Avenue, Leamington Spa, CV32 5PP. See the fuller guide to dining on Clarendon Avenue or the main Leamington Spa restaurant page to book.