A St Albans restaurant has gone beyond the call of duty to help isolating households well out of their delivery area.

Tavah, which provides authentic Pakistani food from its premises in Hatfield Road, was asked to help out through social media by Maryam Khan, who lives in California.

Her brother and his wife's family had both contracted Covid and were quarantined at home in Luton. Maryam wanted to find somewhere local to them where they could obtain Pakistani cuisine and have it delivered to their homes.

Over five days Tavah provided a free meal for the two separate households - which each had five people - providing a mix of curries and side dishes over their period in isolation, even though Luton is well out of their delivery area.

They even fulfilled a special request for yakhni - a Pakistani chicken broth - which was made by the mother of the restaurant's owner Mani Nisar.

Mani said: "We are grateful to Maryam for the opportunity to feed something back into the community that has given us so much. We hope to see her and her family at some stage and grant us the privilege to serve them in person.

"As a small business operating in difficult times, we understand the many challenges we all face. If any one of our followers knows of anyone vulnerable that we can help we are always here to listen and support a good cause.”

Maryam was so grateful for the help to her family in the UK at her time of need, and said: “The support Tavah provided at this time I don’t think I could have got from anywhere else in the UK… A massive thank you, it’s hard to find people with such compassion, even here in the USA.”

Everyone at Tavah would like to wish Maryam’s family a very speedy recovery.