The Diwan-E-Am is one of Hexham's longest established Indian restaurants, priding itself in providing only the very best traditional and contemporary Indian dishes, prepared using the finest spices, fresh fruit and vegetables. Herbs are nowadays recognised once again as sources of healing as well as powerful antidotes for treatment and prevention of illness.

Turmeric, for instance, is an antiseptic; cloves can be beneficial to the heart. So some of the milder Indian dishes are packed full of herbs, others are rich in piquant spices that create the sort of aroma which caresses your taste buds as you enter the average Indian restaurant or street market.

Amongst the wide variety of freshly cooked dishes to be enjoyed at Diwan-e-Am are duck cooked with Satcora (a type of lemon from the Syhet region) in a sour and hot texture, or aromatic duck cooked sweet and sour in a coconut sauce.

Gosht dishes offer a variety of lamb treated with methi leaves, ground cashew nuts, pomegranate sauce, split chick peas, hot lime flavouring, as well as the traditional rogan gosth, cooked with extra garlic and tomatoes.

Indian cooking pays considerable homage to vegetarian cooking, and a shabnab curry is a delightful cream curry of mushrooms and green peas. Ponch Chorchori reveals a mixture of spicy vegetables in a hot and sour sauce. Biryani dishes carry a vegetable version as well as the favourite King Prawn, chicken and lamb.