Can a curry blog – even a highly-respected, award-winning curry blog – truly stay on top of the world's spicy news when it only updates once a week? Probably not, which is why Trampy and The Tramp's Glasgow of Curry occasionally orders up The Monday Side Dish: a platter of grilled titbits to tide you over until Thursday. Pass the raita ...

As you may or may not know, the mighty Scottish Curry Awards 2011 are cocked, locked and ready to rock, taking place on Monday May 23 at the Thistle Hotel in Glasgow. Nominations are now open, so to ensure your voice is heard, check out the categories here and download a nomination form. Get to it, because the closing date for nominations is Friday April 15. You may remember around this time last year, the Tramps were harassing visitors to nominate this very blog in the Curry Lover of the Year category – rest assured there will be no such shrill badgering this year. Some restaurants have already got the ball rolling on their campaigns though ...

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Multiple nominee the Taj Mahal in Biggar always manages to impressively mobilise customer support, and is looking to secure a nomination in 2011 for the third year running. Closer to home, the excellent Mr Singh's India have blogged about the awards, and after being part of the four-strong restaurant team that helped Glasgow become Curry Capital 2010, they must fancy their chances. Will TATTGOC endorse any particular candidates? You'll have to wait until a bit closer to the nomination closing date to find out.

You may remember that earlier this year the Tramps created a list of New Year Resolutions, one of which was to try and get nominated in a category other than Curry Lover of the Year in the 2011 awards, but since they haven't opened a restaurant or founded a supermarket chain and created an own-brand ready-meal curry, things are looking unlikely. For even though they view themselves as philosopher kings and warrior poets, it's still probably a little early for them to score a Lifetime Achievement Award. Right?


There are rumblings that the Scottish Curry Awards 2011 may expand to include an English Curry Awards event in Manchester but in the meantime, did you know there was already a Welsh Curry Awards? Except it's actually called Welsh Curry House Of The Year, and it's sponsored by our good friends over at Kingfisher Lager. The first stage of the competition has been completed, with 12,000 voters creating a shortlist of 30 restaurants across the country. To have a chance of making it to the final three, each restaurant must create a special Welsh curry for their public menu using Welsh lamb and Really Welsh leeks. Sounds like a tasty challenge, and the overall winner will be announced on Thursday April 14. Pob lwc!


And finally, here are your now-obligatory TATTGOC social networking plugs:

Join up to the TATTGOC Facebook group for a warm sense of spicy community

You can now also follow the Tramps on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TATTGOC

And if you've got a news titbit, drop us a line at trampyandthetramp@trampyandthetramp.com

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