And so with his wife Harpreet Kaur sandhu and father-in-law Ravinder jit singh, Cafe Tandoori was born.

Rajinder came to Australia in 2006 where he trained in hospitality and commercial cookery in Sydney. His style of cooking is heavily influenced by his earlier years growing up in North India; it is Punjabi style cooking.

"I love cooking," Rajdinder said as he talks excitedly about how they grind and mix their own spices.

"For example take garam masala, everyone has their own recipe."

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Garam masala is a key combination of spices for curries which form one of the stables of North Indian cooking, along with rotis or naan breads, spinach based saag and lentil-based dahl dishes.

Although Rajinder only started in April, Cafe Tandoori is collecting a loyal following with people commenting on the quality of the food.

"Indian food cooks slowly. The cooking style is to saute to start with and then cook slowly. It needs time to absorb the spices and flavours." Rajinder said.

He said his family in India might spend a whole day cooking a saag made from mustard leaf. Starting in the morning, it would be ready in the evening with things added during the day.

"We would serve it with a corn roti, it's very traditional."

In Australia he uses spinach but does serve up the traditional goat curry.

"Saag is mild and so is the yellow curry dahl. Only the vindaloo is hot and the madras is very hot but according to people's taste we can change it," Rajinder said, adding that most dishes were medium heat.

The long cooking time means Rajinder and Ravinder are in the kitchen early, mixing spices and allowing the dishes to simmer slowly.

Rajinder has plans and wants to make the space more of a restaurant experience. At the moment much of their business is coming from takeaway, although Cafe Tandoori is open Tuesday to Sunday for dining in as well.

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