The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Table talk
Atul Kochhar’s new restaurant isn’t just another upmarket Indian, our critic discovers
William Sitwell visits Kanishka in Mayfair
HAVE YOU EVER looked at a field filled with sheep and thought, ‘What that field needs is another sheep’?
No. Me neither. But then that’s because we are neither genius nor lunatic. We lurk in the world somewhere between poverty and extreme wealth. So let’s consider those rare souls who have magic goggles that enable them to see apparent gaps in the food market. There was James Averdieck, who in 2003 quit St Ivel because he wanted to make small chocolate puddings. ‘Yeah right,’ muttered some, only to be flabbergasted just seven years later when he sold his Gü business for £32.5 million. It was a different story for Denis Papin who, back in 1679, considered the range of available ovens in London and invented the pressure cooker. It was rather less lucrative (for him, at least) and he died a pauper.
Now imagine you are a restaurateur and given a current trend in London, you cast your eye at the crop of smart Indian restaurants in the capital and, looking at this metaphorical flock of sheep, decide to add another.
For there are a lot of them. Particularly in Mayfair, especially on Maddox Street. On this small road alone there is Bombay Bustle and Lucknow 49, and now Kanishka. The latter is run by Atul Kochhar, who was the first Indian chef to receive a Michelin star in 2001 when he was head chef of Tamarind on Queen Street. He then opened Benares on Berkeley Square in 2003, which gained a star in 2007. But Kochhar doesn’t just cater for the Mayfair set; he keeps it
real with a place called Indian Essence in Bromley.
Having left Benares last year, he has teamed up with restaurant investor Tina English and opened Kanishka. Because, you see, there’s a gap in the market. Although you may not have realised it.
For when Kochhar and English went looking for an Indian in Mayfair it occurred to them that there was simply nowhere that one could get food from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland or indeed Tripura. These are the regions of northeast India. Because Britain is nudging towards having its own food culture, I’d like to think that one day this could happen in a country like India. Just imagine, years from now, a British chef and an Indian investor in Delhi walk around Connaught Place and decide the smart English restaurants only serve ubiquitous food from Hampshire, Kent and Sussex. They see a gap in the market. ‘We need to open a fine-dining concept where the street food of Sunderland, Teesport, Seaham and Blyth can be presented to the sophisticated palate of the modern and cultured diner.’
As we dream on, let’s consider the reality of Kanishka. It is a place of breezy colour and light, of panels of Capri blue divided by black and white stripes, more Mykonos than Manipur. Between a £69 seven-course tasting menu and a three-course set one for £29 is the à la carte, which tempts you with dishes that would be novel to most curry house habitués. So we spy a Tibetan Lobster Thupka and a dish called Videshi Style Muntjac Ki Bati – venison steaks with grilled apple and juniper garam masala gravy.
I choose ‘Atul’s Chicken Tikka Pie’, which is a sort of scented and refined version of a pie that you would indeed get in Britain’s north-east (that fantasy might be closer than you think). And it’s terrific. The tempting little round pie contains soft chicken tikka and comes with a perfectly bittersweet berry compote. If you love little pastries or sausage rolls, this is a life-changing alternative; an example of why great, dextrous chefs should be constantly encouraged to culturally appropriate.
My friend Guy is eating scallops, meanwhile; a dainty dish, cooked just right and with different shades in texture and colour of cauliflower.
Now I know I should be brave and eat something like Sagolir Manxo ( goat curry), but I spot the Masala Mixed Grill and am intrigued by how they’ll handle it. For the mixed grill can be horrific: brown, unloved, tired and chewy flesh. But here I get a mini feast of tender, sometimes charred, bits of lamb, salmon, prawn and chicken, all cooked with love. If you’re throwing a fancy BBQ this summer and you’ve got cash to flash, get the Stones to do the music and this guy on the grill. The heavenly spread is then topped with wonderfully rich and wet black dal, rice and naan.
Atul Kochhar has looked out at that field and not just seen sheep. He has counted them, noted their variety and added just one more to their number to create the perfect flock.
If you love pastries or sausage rolls, the chicken tikka pie is a life-changing alternative