Sanquhar Spicy Hut

Spicy Hut occupies the High Street parade in Sanquhar, the historic upper-Nith Royal Burgh whose Britain-oldest-still-working post office has been trading since 1712 just a few doors away. The shop sits on the short central run of the High Street that holds most of the town's evening-trade businesses, with the ruins of Sanquhar Castle on the south-east edge of the town and the long single-track main street of the burgh stretching either side. The kitchen runs a hybrid menu typical of small Scottish-town curry houses — Indian curries, biryanis and tandoori on one side, with pizza, burgers, wraps, jacket potatoes and a fish-and-chips section on the other — designed to cover the full late-evening trade for a town with only a handful of hot-food options after 8pm. Reviewers on TripAdvisor, Foodhub and Facebook tend to single out the generous portion sizes and the family-run welcome from the owners as much as any one dish. Sanquhar (pronounced "Sankur") has a population of around two thousand, so a takeaway here trades on being reliable to a regular catchment rather than chasing crowds. Open seven nights a week into late evening, the shop is one of the few options for a hot meal at the end of an A76 run between Dumfries and Kilmarnock.