About Us
Tap & Tandoor Story
In 2018, a pub on Warwick Road in Solihull had been sitting empty for a while. It had been called the Saddlers Arms, and before that it had been plenty of other things — the kind of building that holds a town's history in its walls whether it means to or not.
We took it on with a single idea: what if a proper British pub and proper Indian food occupied the same space, without either one making compromises for the other?
Not a curry house with a bar tacked on. Not a restaurant that happens to stock Cobra. Something genuinely new — a place where you could drink your way through a rotating board of craft beers from local breweries while eating a charcoal-cooked mixed grill or a butter chicken that had actually been thought about. A place that felt like your local, except the food was exceptional.
We called it Tap & Tandoor. The tap for the beer; the tandoor for the clay oven at the heart of Indian cooking. We opened the doors in June 2018 and Solihull, to our great relief, got it immediately.
Growing the idea
In 2019 we moved into Peterborough, taking on the former Carluccio's on Cumbergate and making it our own — hand-painted beer murals on the walls, vintage mirrors and doors sourced from India, a fireplace, and the same food we'd been cooking in Solihull. It was the first Indian gastropub Peterborough had seen.
Southampton followed in 2022. We set up in Westquay Shopping Centre — our first site on the South Coast, and the shopping centre's first Indian Gastro Pub. The city took to it quickly; we've been at the top of the local ratings ever since.
January 2024 brought Portsmouth, at Gunwharf Quays on the waterfront. Again, the first Indian Gastro Pub in the venue — and our first site in a harbour setting, which suits the atmosphere of the place. The beer list in Portsmouth leans into local South Coast breweries, including Staggeringly Good, who have built a devoted following in the city.
Our most recent opening is Bournemouth, on Richmond Hill in the heart of the town centre. Two floors, live sport, interactive darts and shuffleboard, and the same menu that runs across all our sites — though the Bournemouth tap list, as with every location, is shaped by what's being brewed locally.
What stays the same
Five locations, and the same principles running through all of them.
We work with local breweries in every city we're in. That's not a marketing line — it means the tap list in Southampton genuinely looks different to the one in Peterborough or Portsmouth, because the breweries around each site are different. We think that matters.
We use locally sourced meats for our charcoal-cooked mixed grills. We make the food from scratch. We don't add an automatic service charge, because we'd rather earn a tip than assume one.
And we're independent. Always have been, still are. That means the people running each site care about it in a way that a chain managed from a head office usually doesn't.