BEACHCOMBER
102 YEARS OLD AND STILL ENJOYING HIS FOOD...
ALMOST 40 years ago, I visited India, which brought one disappointment in an otherwise amazing trip: I could not find a good Indian restaurant there. I had always enjoyed Indian food in Britain, but suspected that the authentic stuff would show greater variety.
The cheap and cheerful fare over here seemed generally to comprise various foodstuffs cooked in a standard, Indian restaurant flavour sauce.
The aroma hit you as you walked in and everything tasted much the same.
Surely, I thought, there must be more to it, but as I said, I could not test that theory in India as I could not find an Indian restaurant. British Indian restaurants have become better and better since then, beginning, for me, when the charming Vivek Singh opened his Cinnamon Club restaurant in the Old Westminster Library in 2001.
Vivek has an almost mystical knack with spices, sensing what combinations go best with any food he prepares.
The result is deliciously varied and far from that old Indian restaurant flavour. Since then, he has opened the less formal Cinnamon Kitchen and Cinnamon Bazaar, where he can do things with a watermelon that must be tasted to be believed. In recent weeks, however, I have found more places that offer the taste of India I was looking for all those years ago. Among them is Indian Accent in Mayfair, where hugely innovative chef Manish Mehrotra does amazing things with ingredients I have never heard of that make even vegan food extremely tasty. I have tried to recreate several of his dishes, without success. The balance he achieves between unlikely flavours is uncanny.
Then there is Mr Todiwala’s Kitchen in Canary Wharf run by the splendid Cyrus Todiwala who knows more about the history of Indian food than anyone else.
I have yet to try his lentil and rice pancake filled with goat cooked in a spiced yogurt-based sauce, but just thinking about it makes my taste buds tingle.
Now I finally understand the reason behind my failure to find a good Indian restaurant in India all those years ago: it’s simple – the best chefs have all come to London.