THE JOURNAL
Pumpkin Curry at Kricket. Photograph courtesy of Kricket
Why the first place to go for a taste of the Indian subcontinent is the British capital.
It would take a brave soul to suggest that it’s possible to get better Indian food in the British capital than on the Indian subcontinent itself. But what London’s Indian diaspora – and exemplary food scene – does provide is a single city in which the best of India’s regional cuisines can be explored. Not with a long haul journey on the Mandovi Express, but with a Zone 1-2 Travelcard. With Brigadiers – from JKS, the team behind Gymkhana and Hoppers – opening next month, here is the latest batch of restaurants to join the fold.
Rose crème brûlée, honeycomb, balsamic, rose petal relish, meringue, khubhani at Chokhi Dhani. Photograph by Ms Fleur McGerr, courtesy of Chokhi Dhani
Riverside Walk, 2 Nine Elms Lane, SW11
Opened in April this year, Chokhi Dhani is the first London outpost of the Vaswani’s family’s Indian hotel and restaurant empire of the same name. It is sprawled across two floors – one regal, one street foody – in the huge Nine Elms development. As with the family’s ventures in Jaipur, the London venue offers a high-end take on Rajasthani food, with chef Mr Vishnu Natarajan (of Carom in Soho) bringing with him traditional dishes to London plates, along with his much-talked-about tandoori fois gras. And if the food isn’t tempting enough, perhaps the restaurant’s design centrepiece will make you ponder a visit: a life-sized bronze elephant.
Dry Tandoori masala beef rib-eye steak at Brigadiers. Photograph courtesy of Brigadiers
1-5 Bloomberg Arcade, EC4
With Marylebone’s Trishna and Mayfair’s Gymkhana, Mr Karam Sethi has helped redefine Indian food in London. Since Mr Sethi’s butter crab (and the rest) wowed the crowds, JKS – the Sethis’ restaurant group – has been expanding across the city, with branches of Sri Lankan joint Hoppers and Motu, an Indian take on British-Indian food. Its latest venture, due to open on 6 June, is an Indian barbecue joint right in the heart of the City. Based on an Indian officers’ mess, there’s live sport, a rotating menu of more 30 beers and more grilled meat than an NFL tailgate party. If you can stand the testosterone, stay for the smoked Nepali bhutwa lamb ribs or the Awadhi wood-roasted skate wing.
Soy keema, quail egg, lime leaf butter pao at Indian Accent. Photograph courtesy of Indian Accent
16 Albemarle Street, W1
Located across the road from Gymkhana, the arrival of Indian Accent has helped confirm Albemarle Street’s transformation into a Rusholme Curry Mile for people with black Amex cards. And like other grand London subcontinental rooms, Indian Accent is an import from a grand Indian hotel. The original opened in New Delhi’s Manor Hotel in 2009 and has since moved across that city (to the Lodhi), as well as establishing a branch in New York. Chef Mr Manish Mehrotra has been there for the whole journey and is on hand in London where his blue cheese naan has had British critics and diners salivating since it opened in October 2017.
Seafood tawa pulao at Bombay Bustle. Photograph courtesy of Bombay Bustle
29 Maddox Street, W1
Yet another exemplary new Mayfair venue is Bombay Bustle from the team behind Jamavar, a Michelin-starred north Indian also in, you guessed it, Mayfair. As the name hints, Bombay Bustle offers a little of the old India – starting with an Art Deco railway-themed room, with the excitement, bustle and food of modern Mumbai. The menu’s highlight is the rarah keema pao (spiced lamb mince with bread buns) – but, for a closer approximation of actual quotidian Mumbai, head there for lunch for tiffin tins filled with Madras chicken curry, gunpowder peanut aloo and lemon rice.
Wood pigeon at Kricket. Photograph courtesy of Kricket
12 Denman Street, W1
Once a pop-up housed in a former shipping container in Brixton, the first bricks-and-mortar incarnation of Kricket opened in Soho in January 2017, with another outpost in Shepherd’s Bush’s redeveloped BBC Television Centre on the way. It’s the brainwork of – very unusually – two young English chefs, Messrs Rik Campbell and Will Bowlby. In the Soho branch, you can sit at a bar overlooking the open kitchen and watch as chefs prepare Messrs Campbell and Bowlby’s zhooshed-up small plated take on modern Indian food with a focus on British ingredients. Favourites include Keralan fried chicken with curry-leaf mayonnaise and rabbit keena pao (for now) in an ever-evolving menu.
