Landmark 200-year-old Doncaster restaurant to close down for restoration work

The Indus and The Grand St Leger Hotel will shut on Saturday and will remain closed until the work is completed.

A spokesman said the venue would undergo “a full refurbishment andsome structural engineering work.

The statement added: “Being Grade II listed and over 212 years old, the building needs some serious painstaking maintenance every so often.

“Apologies for any inconvenience caused.”

The restaraunt, which has a commanding position over the Racecourse Roundabout at the junction of Bennetthorpe, Leger Way and Carr House Road has long been a favourite or racegoers attending events at nearby Doncaster Racecourse.

The Indus has been one of Doncaster’s most popular restaurants for decades and counts cricket ace Sir Ian Botham among its fans.

The original Indus was a mainstay of Doncaster town centre for many years, attracting a string of star names including the sporting great as well as comics like Sir Billy Connolly and Freddie Starr through its doors

The family which established the original Silver Street eaterie brought the name back to Doncaster in 2020, opening a new Indus restaurant at The Grand St Leger Hotel on Bennetthorpe.

The restaurant, formerly the Crab and Moo, took on the Indus name as a takeaway outlet during the coronavirus lockdown but since the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, it re-opened as a restaurant in its own right.

The original Indus was opened in Doncaster in 1968 by Karim Din, becoming the first licenced Indian restaurant in Yorkshire and ten years after its opening, it was expanded to cater for nearly 200 diners.

With the help of his son Nayeem, it became one of the most successful restaurants in the region in the 1980s and 1990s and became synonymous as the favourite haunt of cricketing legend Sir Ian Botham.

The restaurant famously provided all the food for Sir Ian’s legendary charity walks in aid of Leukaemia Research before its closure in 2005.

The new restaurant, run by John Din, serves up some of the original Indus dishes which are still popular with customers who remember the originals - and will be developed to combine some new unique dishes from the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East.