The one fire: what a tandoor does

Banked in the afternoon, fired for the evening

A tandoor is not an oven. It is a clay cylinder that holds heat in its walls and radiates it inward, so a piece of meat cooks from every direction at once while the surface sets almost immediately.

It runs far hotter than a domestic oven and it cannot be turned down. You work with where it is.

Why the smoke matters

Fat drips onto the coals and comes back up as smoke. That is the difference between a good makhani and a forgettable one — the chicken goes through the fire before it goes into the gravy.

Most kitchens skip that step because it costs a stage. It is the step.

Ninety seconds

High Tide is tiger prawns in the tandoor for barely ninety seconds — long enough to take colour, short enough to stay translucent at the centre. There is no margin in that.

The tandoor is also a shared fire, which is why we will never tell a guest with a severe allergy that it is a clean environment. It is not, and saying so would be a lie.