You don’t need much gumption to write about restaurants, but it does help not to be a mindless slave to cliché. A special wooden spoon award, then, to the recent Sunday Times reviewer – temporary, thank heavens – who noted the continuing prevalence of flock wallpaper in the capital’s Indian restaurants. As anyone with half a brain will have noticed, most new subcontinentals in recent times have gone for a look best described as chilly minimalism, so desperate have they been to shake off any association with wallpaper, flock or otherwise. Now, indeed, Indian restaurants are well into a ‘third way’ – they have worked out that they are just restaurants that happen to be Indian, and can come decorated any way they damn well want.
This Spitalfields newcomer – with dark décor apparently inspired by the seminal Hakkasan (Japanese), via Mint Leaf (Indian)- is firmly in the third-way category, although it lacks the sense of style of its pricier predecessors. That would not necessarily be a criticism if it were not for the fact that its cuisine harks back to the days of – yes, you guessed – flock wallpaper of the vilest hue. On our experience, admittedly of a modest meal, the food here is of a standard below that you could expect in any competent corner curry house, and prices were far higher – £5.50 for an onion bhaji? If you can’t turn out a decent lamb biryani and a tasty peshwari nan, don’t open up an Indian restaurant in the world’s leading Indian restaurant city.
The staff here are friendly and welcoming, and trying very hard, but on our visit they were milling about for want of custom. Their similarly new neighbours, however, were already notably busy.
