Star Wars: the Indian Food Scene in London by Bruce Palling

 Behind the revamped Kings Cross and St Pancras Stations, there is a huge development around Granary Square, which was once the transit point for rail goods before they went on their way either by road or canal in the late Nineteenth Century. The former stable building on this 67-acre site has been transformed into the largest Indian restaurant ever to open in London - the brainchild of Shamil Thakrar, who re-invented the Irani restaurant concept of Mumbai and called it Dishoom.

There is space for 250 diners over several levels and more than 90 people can be accommodated at the marble-topped bar, which will serve barrel aged cocktails while elsewhere there is a replica of a juice bar, straight from Bombay Central. Even the walls are covered in elegantly painted pre-Independence graffiti declaring 

No making mischief in the cabins

Dishoom's King Cross offering

Hardly any non-Indian Londoner had even heard of Irani cafes before Dishoom opened in Covent Garden four years ago, but now they taken become an integral part of the kaleidoscope of Indian cuisine on offer here. The second branch, which opened in Shoreditch, the fashionable enclave next to the City of London, has two-hour queues at weekends. “There was no one with an agenda to cook people’s food. If you say the word Indian to someone, they will think Bollywood, Cricket, Days of the Ray or a curry house. We have a different ambiance squarely located in Bombay, which is a mad sort of place with a multi-ethnic texture, which I wanted to celebrate, along with the high Gothic style of the Victorian era,” said Shamil.

“We want everyone who comes in, which includes Lakshmi Mittal, David Cameron and comedian-revolutionary Russell Brand – to be seated next to a cool hipster or a poor student. For me, it is very important where people can enjoy great food which isn’t court cuisine or rarefied food.”

The first Indian restaurant opened in London more than 200 years ago just off Portman Square with an entirely different type of client in mind.  Called the Hindostanee Coffee House, it was decidedly an upmarket affair, with bamboo-cane sofas and an en suite room to smoke hookahs. However, it never really caught on except amongst the small group of Britons who had lived in the Subcontinent and the founder went bankrupt two years later.

A lot has changed in two centuries. The latest Michelin Guide to Britain has seven Michelin-starred Indian restaurants in London alone, which is second only in numbers to those for French restaurants.

There are something like 9000 Indian restaurants in Britain with all but a fraction serve standard North Indian fare, such as chicken tikka masala, rogan josh, various kebabs and the occasional saag or aloo dish thrown in. Nobody claims these are temples to culinary excellence, but they have a devoted following amongst the entire population, not least for their budget prices. In the past decade or so, some surveys claim that chicken tikka masala is Britain’s favourite dish. In popular mythology, a group of (invariably male) friends spend the early evening in a pub getting inebriated before staggering to the nearest Indian Curry House for a tikka masala and a vindaloo to banish the effects of their earlier night out.

It is not just at the populist level that Indian cuisine has taken off in London – Gymkhana, which celebrates the cuisine of the Raj clubs of the Subcontinent, was recently voted the top restaurant in Britain in the National Restaurant Awards. Giles Coren, the restaurant critic of The Times, declared it his most favourite restaurant ever, while my friend Richard Vines of Bloomberg’s practically lived in one of the booths for the first few months after it opened. It also gained its first Michelin star a few weeks back. A few years earlier, Trishna, which is owned by the same proprietors as Gymkhana and specialises in West Indian coastal cuisine, was awarded a Michelin star.

What makes all of these developments significant is that none of these strands of Indian cuisine really existed in London before and yet all three have been immediately embraced and patronised by London’s sophisticated dining crowd.

The Gymkhana phenomenon is the most extraordinary. Decorated in the style of British sporting clubs in pre-Independent India, the walls are festooned with photographs of moustachioed polo players or cricketers, with ceiling fans cooling the dark wooden booths and marble topped tables below. The Indian cricket team recently dropped by after their thrashing at Lords. Forget the ambiance though; it is the quality and authenticity of the food, which really attracts the customers. It is located in the heart of Mayfair and serves dishes, which are seriously spiced, which means they might challenge the palates of most of the non-Indian patrons. One of the most popular dishes is kid goat methi keema, which for a small charge, can be accompanied with bheja or goats brains. Gymkhana has been embraced by the critics and everyone else and is impossible to get a reservation for weeks on end.

 Karam Sethi, 31, is the chef-proprietor of Trishna and Gymkhana, along with his brother Jyotin and sister Sunaina, who are also involved in several European restaurants, two of which have recently won Michelin stars. Although all of them were born in Britain, their parents emigrated to London from India in the Seventies and they all maintain close ties with the Subcontinent. Karam spent a year working in the kitchens at the Sheraton in Delhi, including Bukhara and longer at Zuma, the Japanese influenced restaurant in Knightsbridge which has been replicated all over the globe by chef Rainer Becker and his Indian backer, Arjun Waney.

However it was not all plain sailing. “ When we started Trishna six years ago, there was not a positive attitude from the Indian community - too fancy or perhaps not spicy enough. We changed things and it is now very positive,” Karam added.

Sethi puts his success at Gymkhana down to the fact that it “sits in between the Brick Lane curry houses and the high end Michelin starred Indian places. The love of Indian food in Britain started in the Seventies, when it was a curry Bangladeshi sort of thing and it stills goes on but more and more people are travelling to India, so they know it is more than just a curry house style”. Also, London is the hub for wealthy NRI’s (Non Resident Indians), and they make up a third of Gymkhana’s clients.

We create our food here to satisfy Indians because we know that British people like it that way as well. It is a mistake to tone it down of Frenchify it. However, I knew before opening that if we didn’t have staple items like butter chicken and palak paneer on the menu, people would kick up a fuss, so those two or three dishes are there as staples.”

 This is as near as it gets to Indian home cooking with an attractive emphasis on game dishes, such as Partridge pepper fry, quail seekh kebab or the glorious wild muntjac biryani with pomegranate and mint raita. Sethi says “Hunting is banned in India, so all you can get are farmed quails, but the Indian rajahs who have partridge or pheasants on their estates obviously eat them.”

 “Everything I do stems from the home cooking of my mother – especially the style and level of spicing. I was also influenced a lot by Rainer Becker and his philosophy of sharing plus never having too many ingredients on the plate,” Karam said. There was also a desire to expand the repertoire of ingredients.

“When we started Trishna in 2008, there probably wasn’t a single Indian restaurant serving any other seafood than sea bass or prawns on their menu. We were serving everything from langoustines to scallops to cockles and whelks and so on.

With Gymkhana, it was more influenced by the food I had eaten in India like Bukhara and the kebabs, or the Delhi Golf Club, which has a great terrace where they have plates and plates of kebabs, which you eat with a beer and then finish with a dahl and a biryani. That style of eating influenced Gymkhana in terms of the informality of it, which as the years have gone by, people want more and more. It also chimes in with people wanting to have a selection of sharing dishes in the middle of the table rather than a starter, main course and desert. We have always done that from day one – sharing big, bold flavours and food that is accessible to all kinds of palates and levels of the market, so you can come into Gymkhana and eat for £20 or come in and eat for £100 – you can order a couple of drinks from the bar and have a plate and spend £30 or for a full blown anniversary dinner, you can probably spend £150. People from India actually seek us out because it reminds them of “Ghara khana” home cooking in India – without fashionable fusion – swipes, swirls, cresses and all of that rubbish.”

The world of leading Indian chefs in London is rather quarrelsome and bitchy – it proved impossible for me to arrange a joint photograph of the leading chefs due to various infighting and squabbles which appear to go back years and involve issues which are no longer very clear. (One leading Indian chef in London sneered at the popularity of Gymkhana, saying that the style of dishes served there hasn’t evolved from what is available in India itself. Karam Sethi is amused rather than offended by such comments.)

 Atul Kochhar, the first Indian chef to gain a Michelin star simultaneously with Vineet Bhatia, is the chef-proprietor of Benares in Mayfair and godfather of innovative Indian cuisine in London. Some Indian based critics accuse him of virtually inventing “Frenchified” Indian cuisine – a charge which strikes him as absurd.

 “There are 36 distinctive cuisines within India so it is impossible to talk in a singular sense about Indian cuisine. It is as ridiculous as suggesting that all food in Europe is similar because everybody uses salt and pepper. The idea that including non-Indian influences makes cuisine inauthentic comes from within India. Those critics forget that there are tens of millions of Indians who live outside the country and have a very different point of view. I am cooking for them and Europeans, not people living in India and I certainly don’t believe I am doing anything wrong. In Bengal, people like eating fish head curry but if you gave it to a Punjabi, he would puke. I don’t call it Frenchifying - I call it using different techniques. If you cook some meats sous-vide, it enhances the flavour. It may not gel with Indians in India, but I am not in India. I am a big fan of tradition but not of authenticity, as that is time-bound. If my forefathers ate meat that was overcooked 10 times, that is not something I want to follow.”

Why does Atul think there are so many divisions within the top Indian chefs in London? “I have absolutely have no idea why.  I wish I could tell you. Perhaps we still believe we are living before the Raj and are still in warring states? French chefs grow by holding each other’s hands. When people come along and think they can steal you ideas and your people rather than being innovative and creative, that’s where the bitterness starts coming in. It has happened to me - that’s why I am speaking out. Its good business ethos if you are opening in the neighbourhood to reach out. Indian cuisine could win two/three Michelin stars if we put our heads together, but it is not what we are able to do – we are very good individually, but working together, we are a failure.

We all have this fear that if we lose this, we will have nothing. It is not just the cuisine that counts these days - it is how savvy you are, how you run your marketing campaign, what kind of people you employ, location. I have tried many times to get all of the chef’s together sit down and have a chat. Vineet Bhatia called me 14 years ago and said we can’t be friends any more, but I still don’t know why.”

Vineet is the other chef that creates “Frenchified” single dishes with sophisticated spicing, at Rasoi, his townhouse restaurant in Chelsea.He would dispute this terminology to describe his cuisine, which is probably the most rarefied Indian cuisine in London, with unerring accuracy regarding the spicing but taking on a distinctive Western appearance on the plate. “Innovation has always been my focus. From mulberry kheer to violet jalebis, I am all the time playing around with different combinations of Indian spices and racking my brains as to how to present great Indian food in new ways. My effort has been not to offer the predictable samosas and tikkis in the menus. I have always tried to think out-of-the-box and offer a completely new gastronomical experience such as Roasted Lobster with Broccoli Khichdi. It’s all about staying connected with my roots, exploring our rich culinary heritage and presenting it in a contemporary fashion.”  

Vivek Singh and his Cinnamon Club, just around the corner from the Houses of Parliament, occupy a different niche. This is well-cooked westernised Indian cuisine that will not frighten the horses – or the Members of Parliament who frequent it in session. Again, it arrives at the table fully plated but many dishes would be considered western, such as the venison or lobster tail dishes if it wasn’t for the Indian spicing. “We describe our cuisine as evolving modern Indian – using traditional techniques combined with the best local produce, wherever in the world we are cooking. We create a marriage of old and new, east and west,” Vivek stated.

He must be doing something right as the Cinnamon Club serves 350 people on a busy night, which could well make it the highest grossing Indian restaurant in London, if not the globe.

One influential Indian chef in London, who because of his modesty is almost beneath the radar, is Sriram Aylur, chef and director of operations at Quilon. It specialises in Indian west coast cuisine and has held a Michelin star for eight years. Sriram is also director of Bombay Brasserie, the Indian restaurant that was the first to be embraced by the social set when it opened 30 years ago in Kensington.

He is not surprised by the high number of Michelin stars held by Indian restaurants in London, as he believes that London has the most informed audience for Indian cuisine anywhere outside of the Subcontinent. “You can’t just dish out anything in Indian restaurants any more because chances are that many of your clients will have travelled to the region you are specialising in.”

He will not be drawn on the traditional vs. avant-garde argument. “I cook using both classical and progressive techniques but regardless of this, everything has to come from an Indian ethos and the seasoning used must not be simply from India, but the west coast of India, such as mustard, curry leaves, tamarind, cumin, coconut and five or six different types of chilli I use in my kitchen.

 When we create new dishes, they should feel like they had always been there.” Sriram thinks the future of Indian cuisine in London is with regional cuisine. “Central India and the east coast have a lot to offer. Gujarat and Indore are interesting, as is Lucknow providing it can be cooked in a way that is relevant to the current times.”

Amaya is another prestigious Indian restaurant in London, but serves dishes for sharing rather than conventionally plated. The concept was developed by co-owner Camellia Panjabi, who has a long involvement with Indian cuisine both in India and Britain. She was a founder of Bombay Brasserie, which was the first Indian restaurant in London to attract a following amongst the social set, more than 30 years ago. Since then, she has founded the Masala Zone of fast food restaurants plus acquired Veeraswamy, one of the oldest surviving Indian restaurants in London. “When I launched Bombay Brasserie, there was a saying – ‘Indian restaurants are where you take your mother-in-law, but never your banker’. People’s attitudes have changed since then. We hit upon the idea of having an open kitchen and all food coming to the table within one minute of being cooked. It is as if everybody is making their own tasting menu, so by the end of the meal you have had more than a three course meal.”

“Indian food in England has been considered to be a sharing cuisine, which puts certain limitations on us because not every customer at the top end wants to share. It could be people who have never met before or who have different spice levels. So we thought we would take Indian food out of this orbit - yes you can share but you can always have your own plate and have what you want.”

(One interesting point Camellia made is that even in the Subcontinent, Indian restaurants are a relatively new phenomenon. “When I grew up in Bombay, there were no Indian restaurants - they all served Western food, unless they were snack shops like Irani restaurants.

The first Indian restaurant to open after Partition began when Punjabi refugees from Pakistan opened tandoori chicken places on the pavement. There were no Indian restaurants in five star hotels and we planned to open the first Indian restaurant in the early Seventies.”)

 Amaya definitely appeals to the international rich, who naturally congregate in and around Belgravia. However, Camellia is quite pessimistic about the future of places like Amaya: “I forecast that in five years time, London will become the capital of the world for quick fast food produced in a beautiful ambiance, but with food cooked in factories.”

Why this Doomsday conclusion? “In the past two years, all of the leading Japanese, Thai, Chinese and Indian restaurant groups have been looking abroad for expansion rather than in London. I think that London, which is definitely the gourmet capital of the world for all cuisines, is going to perhaps just become the gourmet capital for Western food and all of the international food groups are going to have to move their attention elsewhere. This is an opportunity lost – London could easily have had both. It is a road to disaster if you have limited number of Work Permits tied to high salaries for maximum number of hours.”

Not all Indian restaurateurs have such a pessimistic outlook and Shamil Thakrar and Karam Sethi have not been standing still either. It is true that Indian chefs can now command seriously good salaries because of the high demand. As for Work Permits, other restaurateurs agree it can be a hassle applying for them, but Shamil Thakrar for instance, is importing six or seven chefs from India to work at their Kings Cross site, which opens this month. “We have not had any problem getting skilled chefs in on Work Permits. It’s a pain, but it is manageable.”

Perhaps some of the traditional restaurateurs are upset at the fluidity of the job market for top Indian chefs. Once some of the leading chefs have gained UK residence after four years on Work Permits, they have left their original employers for better offers elsewhere. Karam Sethi, who has been criticised by some older chefs for hiring their leading chefs, is unrepentant.

“It is definitely harder to get a Work Permit for a chef from India but if you treat your staff well and pay them enough if you work alongside them and give them enough ownership, there’s no problem and they won’t leave you. The lack of Work Permits is just an easy excuse for not expanding or improving – it’s pitiful.”

“In terms of quality, the whole package in London in terms of ambiance and décor, is more innovative and creative. I still think there are only a very small number of places in India – a handful – where the food is as good as it is here.” Even now in India, there are so many taxes and licences you need to run a restaurant that it is not that easy. I had thought of opening a restaurant in Delhi before I launched Trishna, but it was far too complicated and you had to know the head of police and the senior civil servants in charge of the licences, so it was all too risky.”

With all of the interest and attention to Indian cuisine in all its many guises, it is impossible to imagine that it will dramatically wither and die in the coming years. After all, there are still numerous Indian regional cuisines and techniques that have yet to be found in London and it would be a brave person who predicted that more won’t be arriving here before too long.

A lengthier version of my story, which ran in India Today

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/londons-masterchefs/1/403013.html