Mirch Massalla

Mirch Masala — the spelling on the shop signage drops one of the l's the database has — sits on Cheviot Crescent, the curving central road through Fintry, the post-war housing scheme on the north-eastern edge of the city built in the 1950s to rehouse families out of the centre. The shop is one of three Indian takeaways clustered along Cheviot Crescent within a couple of hundred yards of one another, the others being Tartan Tandoori a few doors down and Red Chilli essentially next door. It runs a standard mainline Indian and Pakistani takeaway menu — kormas, masalas, baltis, biryanis, tandoori sets — and competes within that tight Fintry cluster largely on price and on the consistency of the regulars. Trade is overwhelmingly local: the kitchen feeds the Cheviot, Findcastle, Fintry and Mill o'Mains housing and the bus-route trade running north out of the centre. The premises were listed for sale as a going concern in early 2022, which gives a sense of how tight the margins are when three Indian shops share one parade in a scheme this size.