Madurai, a restaurant serving naturally gluten free South Indian food in Glasgow, has held Gluten Free Accreditation since May 2025. Known for their delicious gluten free food, they want to continue showing up for the gluten free community by increasing awareness of coeliac disease and raising money to fund research into the disease. Below, hear more from the Madurai team.
“South Indian food has naturally been gluten free for centuries, so when we opened on St Vincent Street in Glasgow, running a fully gluten free kitchen felt like the obvious thing to do rather than a big departure.
After we gained Gluten Free Accreditation, we started talking to a lot of our guests with coeliac disease, and that’s when it really clicked for us. People told us about turning up to restaurants and only being able to order a salad, or having to grill the staff before ordering anything, or just not going out at all. Hearing that changed how we saw things.
We’re not just a restaurant that happens to be gluten free, we’re somewhere people can come and order anything off the menu, share food with friends and family, and not think twice about it.
Hearing from guests about how much it means to them to eat at Madurai without worry, we realised we had a unique opportunity, and honestly a responsibility, to do something with that. It felt like the right moment to give something back to a community that has shown us so much love and support. We’ve got the kitchen and the accreditation, so Coeliac Awareness Month felt like the perfect moment to put all of that to use.
We wanted to raise money for Coeliac UK but also use our platform to raise awareness more broadly. The statistic that 64% of people with coeliac disease are still undiagnosed was shocking to a lot of us, and that motivated us to take part in the 64 Challenge, donating 64p for every dosa or uttapam sold throughout May.
The 64 Challenge and raffle tickets got a good response from regulars and first-time guests. Our fundraising luncheon was a three-course meal with a charity auction, with some great local businesses donating prizes. Across everything – ticket sales, the raffle, the 64 Challenge, and the auction – we managed to raise £2,552.88. It beat our expectations, especially as this was our first time doing something like this.
We’re hoping to make this an annual event, building on what we’ve started this year. The response we got from guests, both on the night and throughout May, gave us a lot of confidence that there’s a real appetite for this kind of thing, and we want to grow it.
One thing we’d genuinely love to see come out of this is other restaurants and businesses being inspired to do something similar. The more people who take safe eating seriously, the better the experience is for everyone living with coeliac disease.”
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