The Imperial Tandoor

Most Peterborough curry houses pick a lane. The Imperial Tandoor runs two. On Lansdowne Street, it keeps a full North Indian tandoor-and-curry menu on one side and a complete Imperial Hakka program — Indo-Chinese momos, noodles, and chilli plates — on the other, and a table is meant to order across both. The breadth is the point. A group that can't settle on one cuisine can put butter chicken, a biryani, and a plate of burnt garlic noodles on the same table without anyone giving in, which is why the place works as well for a mixed family dinner as for a planned night out with a reservation.

The North Indian half is where most tables start. Butter chicken comes Delhi-style, rich with tomato and cream, with a compact Butter Chicken Bowl for a lighter order; Lamb Rogan Josh runs Kashmiri and slow-braised; Imperial Chicken Korma carries the house name; and Hyderabadi Dum Biryani is built around a drumstick. Nalli Nihari brings a long-cooked, bone-in lane that most curry menus skip. The tandoor does heavier lifting than the name alone suggests. Beyond kebabs and tandoori chicken, it turns out Tandoori Lobster and a Tandoori Salmon Tikka, and a Kebab Platter wide enough to anchor a shared table; the vegetarian side runs through Achari Malai Paneer Tikka, several soya chaap variations, and a Shahi Malai Kofta for the table that wants something gentler. Then the Imperial Hakka menu opens the second kitchen — Tandoori Momos, Burnt Garlic Noodles, and a chicken lollipop the menu calls Dragon Fire — adding heat, crunch, and Indo-Chinese contrast to whatever curry is already down.

The range points to a kitchen built for a full dinner, not a takeout counter with seats. The open kitchen puts the tandoor in view, which suits food that is half about smoke and char. A full bar changes what the night can be — cocktails, wine, and beer make this a dinner-and-drinks pick rather than only a curry stop — and a daily happy hour gives an earlier table a reason to time the visit, with shareable plates and discounted pours from mid-afternoon and again late in the evening. Reservations, a patio, and dedicated parking are the unglamorous details that decide whether a party of eight actually books. And the menu is wide enough that a vegetarian, a gluten-free diner, and someone chasing heat can all order from it without anyone settling for a token plate.

The Imperial Tandoor opened in 2017 as a family-run operation, started — according to local reporting — by cousins and business partners Jim Grover and Manish Choudhry. The same partnership later opened Agave by Imperial, a Mexican fine-dining room in downtown Peterborough, a second concept that says something about the footing of the first. The founding idea, in the restaurant's own words, was simple enough: authentic Indian cooking delivered with Indian hospitality. Local coverage in its early years described it in much the same terms, as an authentic Indian dining experience the city had been short on.

The throughline is breadth used on purpose. A North Indian restaurant that also runs a serious Indo-Chinese kitchen and keeps a real bar is quietly solving the most ordinary problem a group runs into — where eight people with different appetites can all eat well in one sitting. The value follows the same logic: order with a little strategy — a couple of curries to share, the website discount the kitchen attaches to its Hakka menu, a happy-hour window for the drinks — and the bill stretches across a full table. Plenty of Peterborough kitchens do one thing and do it cleanly. The Imperial Tandoor bet that a table would rather not have to choose, and built a menu long enough to make that the easy answer.