The Runner, Swindon - desi food, country-style
Abhi Paudel has created a mini desi pub chain and his third offering is the first British-Indian boozer that's part of a family brewery's portfolio
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Last week I took you to the Drink Valley in Swindon. This week we’re still in the town but looking at a more traditional desi pub on the outskirts. This is traditional in the best sense - belonging to a family brewer - but with a desi ‘twist’. Whatever the case you’d love it and I highly recommend a visit.
I went to Swindon because I had to replace the Slough entry - the Three Tuns - from my book after it shut. (If you bought the book, then you can view this week’s article as bonus content!) Slough has the youngest population in the country and, despite the demand, it’s becoming a pub desert. In a week which has seen the tragic demise of the Crooked House, it feels like planners are acting with impunity as the Tories sell off our heritage. Slough might not have many pubs but it has loads of supermarkets - great! - that offer no social cohesion.
I don’t want to add anything to the pub heritage discourse other than this: the Firestone Factory is a great case of what happens when you let developers off. It was burned down before it could be preserved and it feels a fitting metaphor for how our history can easily be destroyed in front of us.
All we can do - other than feel angry - for now is cherish what we have. And I really feel the tonic should be a country desi pub, such as the Runner in Swindon, which comes complete with a wooden water wheel, stream and large beer garden.
Abhi Paudel is an empire builder. I interviewed him at his first pub - the Fishponds Tap about a year ago. Then the publican described a certain nervousness about opening up a desi pub in an area - Bristol - that wasn’t exactly au fait with Indian food.
He need not have worried. Since we last spoke in 2022, the Fishponds became a huge success and he opened another pub in the city in the more affluent Warmley. He admitted that this one - the White Harte - was the biggest crowd-puller but the Runner is the one he’s the proudest of.
You can see why: it’s a beautiful country pub tied to a family brewery that serves wonderful cask beer. In fact, Swindon has an old-fashioned soothing relationship with Arkell's, reminding me of those grand pub estates of well-run plush pubs encasing a town and creating a hospitality micro-climate of fine local beers served expertly to a knowledgeable crowd.
So for Arkell’s to include a desi pub in their portfolio is a big deal. “I can proudly say,” Paudel tells me, “there are no other pubs like this. Arkell’s used to run the pub themselves and we’re the first-ever tenant here.”
When the pub came on the open market, Paudel wasn’t convinced Arkell’s would go into partnership with him because he lived in Bristol and it's an old building that never had meals cooked on an industrial scale. But on the first meeting with the brewer they offered the Runner to him straight away knowing that he would make a success of it.
Paudel, and his business partner (and friend) Bisnukumar Gurung, were given the keys in February, 2023 and shut the pub for a week for a small refurbishment.
“All the Arkell’s pubs have a very basic kitchen,” Paudel says. “Some sandwiches. Some burgers maybe. A few weeks after we opened we started the food and when I visited the kitchen I got scared.
“It was so smokey. The type of food we do - the grill, the spices - there was a lot of fumes. We closed and installed a new canopy extractor system.”
The kitchen is the only change to the Runner and it’s still firmly embedded in the community and valued by locals. Every year there’s a charity duck race, for example, where 15,000 toy ducks are raced for charity on the stream that runs through the beer garden - with 400-500 people visiting on a bank holiday. But this isn’t two desis serving a wholly white clientele.
“There’s a Nepalese community,” says Nepal-born Paudel. “And the other community we attract is the Goan one. But the locals were so pleased that we took over because we were taking the pub somewhere different - the pub had no consistency with food, service and drinks.
“It used to shut at 5pm on a Sunday. They didn’t have the passion. You need to have the passion.”
The food offering is the same as in Bristol (two menus, Nepalese-Indian and traditional) but a few additions have been made since I visited. I try the tandoori wings which are pleasant but aren’t fiery because the heat levels are tailored for a traditional audience. I even tried a paneer pizza which was a worthy bucket-list experiment.
However, the day to visit would be Sunday when roasts are cooked desi-style with marinated, spicy meats served with the usual British trimmings. “It’s a roast with a bit of a twist,” adds Gurung. “Tandoori chicken with gravy. The beef is the same (unspiced) but the chicken is the most popular roast.”
The whole concept of a desi pub is mirrored by this dish because that’s what a British-Indian pub offers: tradition with a twist.
