---
title: "Why Our Pappadams Still Come From the UK"
url: https://currymile.ae/pappadams-from-the-uk/
date: 2026-10-02
modified: 2026-10-02
author: "Jane Velare"
description: "We tried every local alternative. None of them broke the right way."
categories:
  - "Kitchen notes"
image: https://currymile.ae/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/poppadoms-from-uk-1024x576.jpg
word_count: 777
---

# Why Our Pappadams Still Come From the UK

We tried every local alternative. None of them broke the right way.

There are some things you probably shouldn’t care too much about.

A pappadam is surely one of them.

It’s thin, it’s crispy, it sits on the side of your curry — and within a few minutes it has usually been broken into pieces and disappeared.

But if you grew up eating British Indian food, you’ll probably understand why we disagree.

Because a proper British curry-house pappadam has to be big.

It should arrive almost comically oversized. It should be light and crisp, with that familiar bubbled surface. And when you break it, there should be a proper crack before you start loading the pieces with mango chutney, mint sauce or red onions.

It’s a tiny detail.

But Curry Mile was built on tiny details.

## Pappadam, poppadom or papadum?

Before we go any further, we should probably settle something.

Or, more accurately, admit that nobody seems to have settled it.

Pappadam. Poppadom. Papadum. Papadam.

Search for a poppadom in Dubai and you’ll see almost as many spellings as you will restaurants serving them. In Britain, poppadom is probably the spelling most people recognise from their local Indian takeaway or curry house. Elsewhere, papadum and papadam are common.

At Curry Mile, we write pappadam.

Whatever you call them, though, we’re talking about the same thing: that thin, crisp disc that has been starting British curry-house meals for generations.

And ours needed to taste — and, strangely enough, break — like the ones we remembered from back home.

## When we came to Dubai, the ingredients came with us

When Curry Mile first started in Dubai, the idea was never simply to make Indian food.

Dubai already has some exceptional Indian restaurants.

We wanted to make something much more specific: the British Indian curry-house food we grew up with in the UK.

The kind of curry you’d order on a Friday night in Manchester. Chicken Tikka Masala, Korma, Madras, Vindaloo, pilau rice, naan — and, before any of that arrives, a stack of oversized pappadams in the middle of the table.

That distinction mattered.

In fact, during Curry Mile’s first three years, we brought many of our key ingredients over from the UK because we couldn’t always get the same flavour or consistency locally.

Over time, we worked with suppliers in the UAE and managed to source almost everything we needed here.

Almost.

There was one stubborn exception.

The pappadams.

## We really did try the local ones

It would be considerably easier — and cheaper — to buy our pappadams locally.

So we tried.

Then we tried some more.

Different suppliers. Different brands. Different sizes.

Some tasted perfectly good. Others fried nicely. A few came reasonably close.

But there was always something missing.

Usually, they were simply too small.

And even when we found larger ones, they didn’t behave quite like the British curry-house pappadams we knew. The texture was different. The thickness wasn’t quite right. And most importantly, they didn’t break the right way.

That sounds ridiculous until you know exactly what we’re talking about.

Then it makes perfect sense.

## The pappadam test

A good pappadam shouldn’t be tough.

It shouldn’t bend too much before snapping, and it shouldn’t crumble into hundreds of tiny pieces the moment you touch it.

It needs that very particular crispness where you can take one large pappadam, press down with your fingers and hear it crack into a handful of pieces.

Anyone who grew up visiting British Indian restaurants knows the ritual.

Pappadams arrive.

Everyone starts breaking them.

The chutneys get passed around.

And someone inevitably finishes most of the mango chutney before the starters have even arrived.

That’s part of the British Indian curry-house experience.

And it’s exactly the sort of detail we didn’t want to lose just because Curry Mile happens to be in Dubai rather than Manchester.

## So yes, we still bring them over

Today, we’ve managed to source almost all of Curry Mile’s ingredients locally.

But our oversized pappadams?

They still make the journey from the UK to Dubai.

From a business point of view, there are certainly easier ways of doing it.

From a Curry Mile point of view, it makes complete sense. We’re not trying to reinvent Indian food. Curry Mile exists to serve the dishes Britain fell in love with, in the style that people remember eating them.

Sometimes that means getting the curry exactly right.

Sometimes it’s the naan.

Sometimes it’s the mint sauce.

And apparently, sometimes it means flying very large pappadams several thousand miles because the local ones don’t make the right noise when you break them.

We can live with that.

---