AN acclaimed Indian restaurant has won a third award in three years with a specially created fish dish.

Atindra Naskar, one of the executive chefs at the The Raj Bari on Yarm High Street, won an award last week as Chef of the Year in the Asian category of the North East Culinary Trade Association (Necta).

Last year his kitchen colleague, Salim Siddique also won an award for the best South Asian Curry in the North East and in 2013 the restaurant came third in the parliamentary Indian food award, The Tiffin Cup.

Mr Naskar explained that he invented a modern, 'fusion' dish called Lemon Garlic Prawns involving flavours from both Thailand and India for the restaurant's latest competition entry. He also wanted to use seafood, common to the Bengali region and make it healthy, in tune with modern tastes.

He explained the Necta competition was held at Newcastle Racecourse last week and said: "We entered late and had only three days to come up with a dish for what is a very big competition and on the day we thought we had an hour to prepare it, but in fact it was only half an hour. But we knew it was a really good dish."

Mr Siddique explained the new dish would be on a new menu which is currently being devised and will be available next month. The restaurant is a great favourite of newly re-elected Stockton South MP, James Wharton, who went to the Indian venue three times in election week.