After Tom Cruise, Pink discovers 'best Indian food' in the UK

Pop star dines at Asha's restaurant, Birmingham, ahead of her show in the city

Pop star Pink with staff at Asha's Birmingham. Photo: @ashasbhamuk / Instagram

Tom Cruise raved about its chicken tikka masala while filming Mission: Impossible in Birmingham in 2021. Now, it's Pink's turn to discover a new appreciation for Indian food while in the city.

The singer, 43, dined at Indian restaurant Asha's ahead of her show at Villa Park stadium, later saying she "had the best Indian food of my life".

"So if I do random things, it's because of the naan," she told fans at the concert.

Pink and her entourage of 12, which included her two children, turned up at the venue without a reservation but were quickly accommodated, a representative for Asha's told BBC.

"She was sweet and said a lot of people told her to come here when she came to Birmingham," the representative said.

The Just Give Me a Reason singer and her crew ordered samosas and mushroom kurkure for starters. For the main course, they had chicken Chettinadu and chicken dhaba curry.

"She said she liked the chicken Chettinadu. She found the dhaba curry a bit too spicy for her," manager Jebin Jacob told BirminghamLive.

Originated from Chettinad in Tamil Nadu, chicken Chettinadu or chicken Chettinad, is a popular South Indian curry made with ground spices and herbs, including coconut, curry leaves, fennel and sesame seeds.

Pink is currently on her Summer Carnival tour in support of her ninth album Trustfall. The tour, which began on June 7 in the UK, includes dates across Europe, Australia and the US.

"It was a pleasure to welcome Pink ahead of her sell-out show this evening at Villa Park," Asha's Birmingham shared on Instagram on Wednesday.

The restaurant, founded by popular Indian singer Asha Bhosle, has branches around the world including in the UAE. The first branch opened in Dubai in 2002.

But it's the Birmingham branch that seems to have become a celebrity favourite. While dining there in 2021, Cruise loved the chicken tikka masala so much he ordered a second serving, the restaurant said.

English pop star Ed Sheeran is also a regular at the restaurant, with Asha's Birmingham saying it "holds a special place in his heart and is always his favourite place to dine among them all".

Birmingham has one of the largest South Asian communities in the UK.

In June last year, Indian restaurant Varanasi said it had been inundated with phone calls after Johnny Depp dined there.

The Hollywood star, who visited the restaurant a day before he played at the city's Symphony Hall with Jeff Beck, booked the entire 350-capacity restaurant with his 20-member entourage and dined there for five hours.

“He said it was the best curry he had ever had and even went to the extent of asking us to make a new set of food again and take it back to his hotel,” the restaurant's operations director Mohammed Hussain told The Guardian.