A handily-located West End offshoot of the Cinnamon Club mini-empire, offering robust Indian-inspired dishes in a somewhat basic contemporary-style bistro setting.
The charming Vivek Singh is one of those ‘ethnic’ restaurateurs who’ve helped make that term pretty much redundant for savvy Londoners. Say ‘Cinnamon Club’ to anyone in the know, and the image that comes into their mind is as likely to be ‘bastion of the Establishment’ as it is ‘Indian restaurant’.
Having succeeded so well in helping to take Indian cuisine out of any sort of ‘ghetto’, it’s perhaps some sort of joke that the menu of his casual but efficient Soho newcomer includes the likes of his very own take on the Scotch Egg, and on shepherd’s pie too. Such dishes – if not displaying the sort of finesse you’d expect, and pay for, at the Cinnamon Club – were all done very well on our visit, and the setting is well-spaced by West End standards, if not to our mind especially stylish.
For a robust and reasonably-priced dinner in a handy location in the heart of the West End, then, you’re unlikely to do very much better than here. Two chaps on a night out, drinking semi-moderately, spent a reasonable £40 a head, but the pre- and post-theatre menus offer the prospect of something approaching bargain Soho dining.
