Shababs keeps the Birmingham balti sizzling on Ladypool Road

Birmingham has given the world plenty of inventions, but few are as delicious as the balti. And if you want to taste it as it should be, Shababs on Ladypool Road is one of the best places to start.

The balti was developed in Birmingham in the mid-1970s by the city's first-generation Pakistani community. It is a one-pot curry cooked fast in a thin, flat-bottomed steel bowl with two handles, using vegetable oil rather than ghee, and it is served in the same dish it was cooked in. Cooking takes around ten minutes, which is part of its fresh, lively appeal.

Birmingham's love of curry goes back further still. In 1945 Abdul Aziz, one of the first Bangladeshi immigrants to settle in the city, was serving curry and rice from a café on Steelhouse Lane. By the 1990s the Balti Triangle, spanning Sparkbrook, Sparkhill and Balsall Heath, had more than 30 balti houses and drew around 20,000 diners a week.

Shababs opened in 1987 in a former ice cream shop and is now the oldest restaurant still open in the Triangle. Chef Zaf Hussain runs it today, carrying on traditions set by his father, who settled in Sparkbrook in the 1960s after moving from Pakistan, and by his brother, who took over the restaurant in 1987.

In the early days diners often brought their own drinks from The George, a pub across the road. "The pub trade worked hand in hand with the balti houses," Hussain has recalled.

The balti has a passionate champion in Andy Munro, secretary of the Association for the Protection of the Authentic Balti and author of Going for a Balti. "Family support is the future of the balti," he says, and family is exactly what keeps Shababs going.

The wider area is still worth exploring. Shahi Nan Kabab has been serving baltis and Pakistani street food since 1974, while Royal Watan in Selly Park has been run by the same family since 1984. Ladypool Road and Stratford Road now also offer dessert parlours, tea shops and newer places to eat.

So next time a curry craving strikes, head south of the city centre, order a balti and enjoy a true Birmingham original in the place where it was born.