Six curry-mad mates from South Wales aim to tikka the world by storm

Six curry-mad mates are taking social media by storm with their video reviews of Indian restaurants and takeaways.

The group of friends, who have known each other for more than 20 years, formed The Ruby Murray Club to share their love of Indian food and are now aiming to build “the world’s biggest curry community”.

They regularly get together to order, eat and rate Indian food from restaurants and takeaways and make video reviews to share on social.

After starting in June, The Ruby Murray Club already has more than 13,000 followers on Facebook and thousands of video views. They even have their own merchandise and a mobile app is on the way soon.

The mates, Chris Dando (38), Glen Perry (42), Ian Walters (36), Giles Martin (43), Jeremy Carter (43) and Ian Whatley (45) are from the Newport area in south Wales, UK.

What’s the beer like?

Chris said: “We love Indian food, so a few years ago, we started going to different restaurants each month to try new places and have a fun evening with a few beers.
“In February, while at Mowgli’s in Whitchurch, we started bouncing around ideas, initially as a joke, about what a good curry review entails and how we never see what we actually want to in review sites such as TripAdvisor.

“For example, I want to know things like what the chutney tray is like. I mean come on, where’s the innovation beyond just mint sauce and mango chutney? What beer is served? Do we get a piping hot towel at the end of the meal?

“We took those initial ideas and evolved them, and after speaking to a number of restaurateurs we realised that we could really help them to get their messages and images out into the community, to the benefit of both the people that eat their food and the restaurants themselves.  And things have snowballed from there.”

All aboard the curry tour

So far, the group have produced more than 30 reviews from restaurants across Wales but they have big plans for the future, including branching out to other areas of the UK and massively growing their audience.

Chris said: “We’d like to get to 25,000 Facebook followers by the end of 2020, and by the end of 2021 easily north of 100,000.

“We’ll then look at growing other channels.  We’ll be launching an affiliate program, where we find groups of reviewers across the country to tackle their areas, all under the Ruby Murray Club umbrella.

“And then, of course, our curry tours – we’ve been invited across the country so we could be hiring a large camper van and taking a film crew away with us for a week.
“In all honesty, there is so much potential with this curry community and we’ll look to innovate and adapt as we go, with the aim of building the world’s biggest curry community.”