Latest news with #Balti
The Hindu
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Shane Nigam's 25th film, co-starring Shanthnu Bhagyaraj, titled ‘Balti'; title glimpse video out
We had previously reported that Malayalam star Shane Nigam's 25th film, a Tamil-Malayalam bilingual sports action drama co-starring Preethi Asrani and Shanthnu Bhagyaraj, had locked a release date. Now, on Tuesday (June 10), the makers announced that the film's been titled Balti. The makers unveiled a glimpse video to announce the news. The video introduces Shane as a kabaddi player, Udhayan, who is being chased by the police through the narrow streets of a town, a riveting scene that ends at a kabaddi court where Udhayan gets a hero's welcome. He performs a somersault (called balti) as he enters the court. Balti is written and directed by debutant Unni Sivalingam. The film's technical crew includes cinematographer Alex J Pulickal, art director Ashik S, and action choreographers by Action Sandhosh & Vicky. News reports suggest the film has been edited by Shivkumar Panicker. Further, the makers have kept the identity of the music composer of the film under wraps. On Tuesday, acclaimed indie musician Sai Abyankkar retweeted the glimpse video, writing 'Hmm :)', which has fuelled speculations that he is the composer of the film. Produced by Santhosh T Kuruvilla & Binu George Alexander, Balti is set for a release in theatres on August 27.
South Wales Argus
4 days ago
- Business
- South Wales Argus
We tried Pink Elephant Indian restaurant in Merthyr Tydfil
The Pink Elephant on High Street in Cefn Coed, Merthyr Tydfil, opened on Tuesday, May 13 as the sister restaurant to Three Elephants, which is based in Newport and opened in September 2024. The restaurant is under the ownership of Shah Jahan and the staff are trained under the watchful eye of celebrity chef Aitkur Kahman, who is hoping to pass on some of his 20 years of experience in the food industry, including serving King Charles during his time living in London. (Image: NQ) A spokesperson for the team at Pink Elephant said: "We are pleased to be one of the best Indian restaurants in Merthyr with incredible food, polite and friendly staff, and great value for money. "We highly suggest sampling our Speciality dishes and know you will enjoy every taste. When you order your Curry, Balti, Biryani or Tandoori from us, you'll see why we have been named as one of the best places to experience Indian cuisine in the Cefn Coed, Merthyr Tydfil area." (Image: NQ) We were invited down to try out some dishes on opening night, and one of the first things that struck us on arrival was how busy the restaurant was for a middle of the week opening. It was clear that word of the quality and talent of the chefs at Pink Elephant had got around quickly and it was delightful to see how many people were turning out to support a new business. (Image: Supplied) The staff were incredibly friendly, and welcoming throughout our visit, ensuring we had everything we would need while maintaining a wonderfully calm and relaxing atmosphere. We ordered meat samosas to start, which were beautifully cooked, falling apart from the moment the fork touched, but still containing that deliciously spicy flavour and crunch that we come to love. (Image: NQ) We followed that up with a lamb pasanda, served with pilau rice and naan. We could not fault the presentation, as the curry was brought out in a silver bowl, with the naan in a small silver platter and the rice on its own plate. (Image: NQ) The portions were very generous too, with a high quantity of chunks of meat in a curry that was smothered in rich sauce that left our tongue tingling with the strength of flavour. The meat was cooked exquisitely, falling apart the moment our fork touched it, and was covered in a sauce that let its flavours sing and shine in a unique manner with each mouthful. (Image: NQ) During the meal, we were also entertained with a brilliant display of steam curling through a small glass jar. It was really one of those things you have to visit to really experience. Throughout our visit, I could not fault the quality of the food or the friendliness of the staff, and would highly recommend a visit to the Pink Elephant. The restaurant is open from 5pm to 11pm Sunday to Thursday and until 11.30pm on Friday and Saturday.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Newport restaurant opens sister branch we couldn't resist a visit
A NEWPORT restaurant has branched out by opening a sister branch in another south Wales town. The Pink Elephant on High Street in Cefn Coed, Merthyr Tydfil, opened on Tuesday, May 13 as the sister restaurant to Three Elephants, which is based in Newport and opened in September 2024. The restaurant is under the ownership of Shah Jahan and the staff are trained under the watchful eye of celebrity chef Aitkur Kahman, who is hoping to pass on some of his 20 years of experience in the food industry, including serving King Charles during his time living in London. (Image: NQ) A spokesperson for the team at Pink Elephant said: "We are pleased to be one of the best Indian restaurants in Merthyr with incredible food, polite and friendly staff, and great value for money. "We highly suggest sampling our Speciality dishes and know you will enjoy every taste. When you order your Curry, Balti, Biryani or Tandoori from us, you'll see why we have been named as one of the best places to experience Indian cuisine in the Cefn Coed, Merthyr Tydfil area." (Image: NQ) We were invited down to try out some dishes on opening night, and one of the first things that struck us on arrival was how busy the restaurant was for a middle of the week opening. Read more The 'best pub in Newport' serving up a 'highly recommended' Sunday lunch Popular Indian restaurant donates meals to local food bank in kind gesture The new shawarma takeaway so good they sold out twice on the first day It was clear that word of the quality and talent of the chefs at Pink Elephant had got around quickly and it was delightful to see how many people were turning out to support a new business. (Image: Supplied) The staff were incredibly friendly, and welcoming throughout our visit, ensuring we had everything we would need while maintaining a wonderfully calm and relaxing atmosphere. We ordered meat samosas to start, which were beautifully cooked, falling apart from the moment the fork touched, but still containing that deliciously spicy flavour and crunch that we come to love. (Image: NQ) We followed that up with a lamb pasanda, served with pilau rice and naan. We could not fault the presentation, as the curry was brought out in a silver bowl, with the naan in a small silver platter and the rice on its own plate. (Image: NQ) The portions were very generous too, with a high quantity of chunks of meat in a curry that was smothered in rich sauce that left our tongue tingling with the strength of flavour. The meat was cooked exquisitely, falling apart the moment our fork touched it, and was covered in a sauce that let its flavours sing and shine in a unique manner with each mouthful. (Image: NQ) During the meal, we were also entertained with a brilliant display of steam curling through a small glass jar. It was really one of those things you have to visit to really experience. Throughout our visit, I could not fault the quality of the food or the friendliness of the staff, and would highly recommend a visit to the Pink Elephant. The restaurant is open from 5pm to 11pm Sunday to Thursday and until 11.30pm on Friday and Saturday.
Irish Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
Birmingham's Balti, blinders and Irish backbone
MY eyes started to bulge, beads of sweat began to drip from my brow — I realised that my nascent journey through Birmingham's cultural chicane was about to hit the wall when I started to taste a bowl of fiery Hot and Sour Soup ( Suan La Tang ) at a lively Chinatown restaurant. Sichuan peppercorns seemed to be gouging dents in my tongue deeper than West Midlands potholes. And the accompanying fried rice, with its semi-volcanic red chilli paste, was failing to douse the flames. Luckily, I was saved soon after when a very welcome Guinness helped to soothe the pain at the Queen's Arms, a friendly and traditional Art Nouveau pub in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. Another pint followed and, quite soon, normal service was (almost) restored, Well, at least I was able to talk again. Such risks are at the heart of any trip into a metropolis which is a melting pot (literally) of so many of the world's cultures and cuisines, from Irish and Caribbean to Chinese and an abundance of South Asian. The previous day, I had voyaged into the heart of the city, along with my partner and photographer Sue Mountjoy, on a hired narrowboat in which we had tucked into our own version of the Birmingham Balti, cooked previously and frozen at home. James with the Wren tied up in the heart of Birmingham Our onboard meal was based on a recipe from Shababs, one of the city's original Balti houses that refined the legendary Pakistani curry, named after its wok-shaped cooking pan, the Balti, meaning bucket in Hindi and created locally in the 1970s. It was a delightful mix of spices, but our cooking skills hardly matched those of the local aficionados who, despite so much competition from burgers, desserts, pizzas and gastro pubs, can still be found across a city which served 20,000 Balti meals a week in the boom decades between 1990 and 2010. Of course, our four-day journey along the Worcester and Birmingham Canal was as much a relaxing wander through idyllic spring countryside as an exploration of the history of the waterway itself and the countless Irish labourers who sweated, bled and died carving its 22-mile route from Alvechurch Marina to Birmingham's historic Gas Street Basin. During the golden age of canals – a relatively short period, from 1760 to 1800 – it is not known how many Irishmen flocked to regions like the West Midlands, the epicentre of the network with 160 miles of canals (more waterways than Venice, it's claimed), most of which still survive, having come through the eras of the railways, roads and now enjoying a halcyon period of leisure use. Many of these men hid their identities and remain unrecorded by history, suspicious of often aggressive authorities and locals who accused them of taking their jobs by undercutting their already meagre wages. James tries out his onboard Balti curry Yet they came in their thousands, many to handle the harvests of the great English and Scottish estates, before switching to the canals for the better pay for the punishing work of digging 20 tons of earth a day, living amid the disease and violence of nearby shanty towns, where beer and brawling were the key distractions. It was hard not to think of their sacrifices when we faced our first and only real challenge, the seemingly endless and gloomy depths of the Wast Hill Tunnel, which is over a mile and a half long and took us over 35 minutes to pass through with just our boat headlight as our guide. It took the navvies three brutally hard and very dangerous years to dig by hand and build the brickwork (from 1794-97). I wondered how many had died there and had been the legendary 'heavy diggers' of Connemara or the 'tunnel tigers' from Donegal – both had a reputation as hard workers and, even today, have renowned skills in construction, particularly subterranean work. Wast Hill proved passable safely with steel-eyed concentration and, once through, gave me a light-headed sense of achievement when that light emerged and we savoured the warmth and birdsong at the end of its shiveringly dank depths. Even so, our cruise – with not a single ancient lock to negotiate - was ideal for a beginner and for boaters who prefer a gentle cruise through a tapestry of rolling Worcestershire countryside dotted with ancient waterside cottages and elegant grey herons who stared at us intently from the towpaths, hopeful that our propellor would expose a doomed fish or two for lunch. The Wren moored in central Birmingham Our first mooring was at Bournville, the UK's 'Chocolate Town' and home to the all-embracing Cadbury business started in 1824 by Quaker John just four miles away in Birmingham's Bull Street - now American-owned and one of the world's biggest confectionery brands. We had a fascinating wander round the elegant and green Arts and Crafts model village, which the Cadbury dynasty built to provide workers with better living conditions than the cramped Victorian city. But it was in among the giggling children at the Cadbury World exhibition centre (over 500,000 visitors each year) that we saw how clever marketing and continuous change made us both obsessed as children with Dairy Milk! Next day, a small boy Ollie (3) and his great grandmother stopped to chat and look over our 49-foot steel monster, between train spotting on the adjoining Cross-City rail line into Birmingham. 'How fast does it go?' he asked. 'Not very, I'm afraid,' I replied honestly, to his clear disappointment. Yet, as we cast off with the help of our neighbouring boat owner and with advice about the big city's attractions from a young man living in his boat opposite, we appreciated that life at 4-miles-an-hour is a wellbeing antidote to today's busy world. Even as busy Birmingham crept up on us, through the fields, suburban warehouses, and graffiti-emblazoned walls of Selly Oak, Edgbaston and eventually through heart of the city's waterways, the 230-year-old canal nerve centre, Gas Street Basin, and our final mooring berth, Brindley Place, once grimy and choked with industry but now home to countless lively bars, restaurants and such attractions as the National Sea Life Centre, Legoland and the Symphony Hall. For two nights, despite being surrounded by such full-on nightlife, our mooring proved oddly peaceful, with several friendly passing dog walkers, pram-pushers and cuddling couples stopping to chat whenever we stepped out. And by foot and buses, we immersed ourselves in the many cultures of a city which has been home to the Irish for over two centuries, with over 15,000 Irish immigrations arriving by the mid 19th century, attracted by work on the canals, railways and construction industry. The Wren sails through the lengthy Wast Hill Tunnel Our trips took us to some of the city's iconic centres, including Digbeth, the spiritual home of the Irish, and the fascinating Back-to-Backs Museum, where the National Trust spent £3 million preserving three 19th century houses that show the disease, landlord cruelty and squalor those families endured. Interestingly, our guide informed us that due to the high water table locally, the poorest families had not been forced to live in the dark and windowless house cellars as so many arriving Irish had had to endure in 19th century Liverpool. After our return to Alvechurch Marina, we handed back the 'Wren' and drove to Dudley to spend the day at the remarkable Black Country Living Museum, whose grim canal yard featured in the earliest episodes of television's long-running Birmingham drama, Peaky Blinders. The dramatized Blinders on TV are a violent group of organised criminals with Irish roots (led by Tommy Shelby played by Cillian Murphy) but the truth of the fearsome late 19th and early 20th century Birmingham 'slogging' gangs is more complex. Some, grew out of the anti-Irish Catholic violence stirred up by roving preachers who encouraged widespread looting and destruction of the impoverished Irish homes around Park Street in the 1860s. For protection, many youngsters signed up to what became an early youth cult of the day. Today, the Blinders are long gone. And, despite Birmingham's recent headlines over bin strikes and council finance chaos, we enjoyed a city with great pubs and live trad music and learned how their modern-day Irish descendants are now the poets, writers, teachers, builders and musicians that have helped construct the kaleidoscopic culture of a city that can certainly float your Balti boat. FACTFILE For canal trip details visit or call 0344 984 0322 ABC Boat Hire or call 0330 333 0590 Hire prices for the 'Wren,' for example, start at £699 for a short break (three or four nights), £999 for a week. Boats range from 32ft to 70ft and can accommodate from two up to 12 people. For more information about the canal network, visit See More: Balti, Birmingham, Irish, Travel
Irish Times
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Rethink needed on meeting the demand for Stem graduates
K2, known to locals as Chhogo Ri, is an absolute beast of a mountain. Chhogo Ri pretty much translates as Big Mountain in Balti. It is the second highest mountain on the planet and notoriously difficult to climb. While shorter than Everest, the great peak of the Karakoram range holds a psychological edge that its more famous cousin in the Himalayas doesn't. That comes in the form of the Shoulder. This false peak, about 8,000m high, looks to all approaching it like the top of the mountain. A sense of belief and joy can quickly turn to anguish for a tired climber, upon quickly realising there's another 600m to the true summit. Welcome to the position with Stem in Ireland. Government has, for decades, pushed hard to produce more graduates with science, technology, maths and engineering degrees. Data published by the Central Statistics Office at the start of April looked like stellar news. READ MORE Ireland leads the European Union in the number of Stem graduates per capita, at an impressive 40.1 per 1,000, based on 2022 data. Being the best among any group of 27 countries at anything is worth celebrating. Among a group where many have far longer histories in engineering and industry, it's a truly marvellous feat. Yet it's still not enough. The napkin maths, which are always kinder than the real nitty gritty, says that figure needs to be 20 per cent higher right now just to meet the current staff shortages in Stem fields in the State. That's at least through conventional methods. In truth, the approach to sourcing workers with Stem skills, which dates back to the 1990s, needs to evolve. Back then, the sole focus on delivering graduates through traditional third-level routes made a lot of sense. It was a clear and relatively simple policy. Experience has taught us that overcomplicating policy has all too often been a recipe for delays so Ireland's simple 'we need to do this thing' model was appropriate. But to meet today's skills gap, the Government needs to rethink its approach. The core focus should continue to be on delivering greater numbers in the conventional way, through university courses. But we need to improve delivery through other supporting channels if the State is to meet demand. The obvious one is importing talent. It is something Ireland has done for decades in many sectors, including those that are Stem-related, but there are still shortages everywhere. Housing and the cost of living are the easy barriers to point out to the untrained eye but there's a bigger one that is a lot more boring. Our education and training mindset over the past few decades has been to try to make the person fit the system, when really we should be trying to find a system that works for the individual The visa process itself for skilled non-EU citizens remains laborious. Part of that is due to the staff in the Civil Service not having enough resources to manage it but there's also the psychological barrier for businesses. Importing someone from outside of the EU is considered a pain, even though improvements have been made to accelerate approvals in recent years. Companies such as Future Direct, which is entirely focused on managing the visa process, help to fill in the gaps for some employers. Still, improved communications, buttressed by greater resources in the Civil Service, are needed to make business less wary of importing non-EU talent. That isn't the only element which needs to be improved. As I said, the process that got Ireland to the top of the EU table was simple. The pipeline was from the Leaving Cert to third level, straight into a Stem course and then out to the workforce to provide a needed skill. Efforts to address talent beyond the traditional pipeline need to be improved. There are many for whom the traditional route simply doesn't fit. Our education and training mindset over the past few decades has been to try to make the person fit the system, when really we should be trying to find a system that works for the individual. That covers a broad range of areas, apprenticeships and traineeships through to career changes or in-career upskilling. When we see people come through from these approaches today, the first thought can be that they are working as intended. That rather misses the point that these are exceptions rather than the rule in Stem. Improving access and awareness around all of these routes is vital to meeting the industry's staff shortages. Granted, staff shortages are an issue across every sector. When it comes to the growth and sustainability of the economy, however, Stem and construction (for housing and infrastructure) stick out wildly as core areas that need the bump in bodies more than others. If these two areas can be locked down and pushed harder, both through organic and inorganic approaches to increasing their workforces, the skills gap issue elsewhere should become easier to resolve. Ireland should celebrate being the best in the EU at delivering Stem graduates. Now it needs to aim higher to be the best it can be for its own future.
