November, 2010

So we rock up at Moti Mahal, a place we’d walked past possibly three thousand times without a second glance, at the painful end of Covent Garden. Theatre land meets The Piazza throng, multiplied by tourist hordes, divided by incessant waves of people making a bee-line to walk right through you. The area is often better left untouched for Londoners, the decent Great Queen Street aside.

Covent Garden can be hell.

I had always assumed Moti Mahal was an outmoded tourist trap, existing only to sate the appetites of clueless tourists wandering past with a “jalfrezi urge” that catches up on them at the last minute, just after the “£3 pizza slice” urge.

A tandoor oven behind glass unfurls itself on show as we walk in and many fears and prejuidices begin to melt away into the WC1 ether.

Chef Anirudh Arora has a glittering pedigree. Raised in Delhi, Ani was one of only fifteen students out of tens of thousands of applicants to gain a place at an esteemed training college in India. Arriving in London in 2003, he eventually became sous-chef at Benares, the current bench-mark for fine Indian dining. If I’d known all this before I sat down, any fears I had would have been obliterated.

The menu tells a story of the Grand Trunk Road, the artery pumping life through India over 2500km from Kolkata in the East through Varanasi, Delhi, and Amritsar before entering Pakistan. The menu is a collection of the inspirations of rural Indian cuisine that Ani has picked up on his travels through this route.

White table-clothes hint at the ambition in the kitchen.

We crack into the dishes:

We are presented first with a vibrant palate wakener, hunks of fresh tomato, cucumber, radish, to dip into an eye-openingly citrussy pounded mixture of fennel, fenugreek, cumin, dried mango, black pepper. Sets the tongue cracking and the mouth salivating. The menu proper unveils itself:

Jhinga Prawn - Resplendent on it’s own miniature grill, butterflied jumbo prawns with an enlivening zesty paste of spices, mustard, a kick of lime, coriander, and friends. Sweet, sweet prawn, carrying it all off wonderfully. Stand-out dish to impress your date.

Rogan Josht - Yeah, yeah, we’ve all had this one you reckon. So did I. Cooked in a traditional form of Indian grill called a Thatee, made by Ani himself, meat being sandwiched between clamps and grilled, finished in the tandoor. Butterflied leg of lamb, singing with cinnamon, bay leaf, green chillies – bomb of flavours, dense meat flavoured throughout. Integrity of technique clear here.

Murgh Makhani Butter Chicken – First to serve butter chicken in the UK I’m told, a dish I’ve never ordered such is its ubiquity on an Indian menu. Tandoor cooked, with the pleasing char of the tandoor blackening the edges here and there. Bright flavoured sauce lifted by lemon juice, makes this a great dish for mopping up some excellently fluffy Saffron Pilau rice, each grain distinct and moist.

Dal Makhani Black Lentil - Slow cooked on charcoal for eleven hours, a creamy, earthy foil to the bright flavours sparking off elsewhere. Soothing, in an exotic spa-break kind of way. Fluffy Tokri tandoor cooked bread is good at mopping this up and chasing it round the little earthenware pot.

Okra - Side of sensitively cooked Okra, briefly fried, with pleasing crunch and keeping its integrity of shape and texture. Okra becomes decidedly snotty when overcooked, and one of the most unpleasant things to put in your mouth. Not here, effortlessly pulled off.

Tea Treasure Chest - We finish with what does indeed come out as a Pirate treasure chest of sugars, unrefined crystals, discs of white, honey, to flavour a tea charged with clove, ginger, pepper, cardamon. The tea comes with milk already added, which isn’t my thing, the milk or the spiced tea, but hey we just had a storming lunch and a coffee soon sorts out any whimpers on my part.

It’s a joy to see the open kitchen and the tandoor through a wide window, although you have no inkling looking at this from outside – I would have been in years ago if I had spotted this.

It’s fine Indian dining for sure, it’s going toe-to-toe with Benares no doubt, and if Indian food in London wanted a flagship for all that is elegant and considered in Modern Indian dining, then Moti Mohal can put its Tandoor where its mouth is.

Moti Mahal

45 Great Queen Street

Covent Garden

WC2B 5AA

Several Kimchi hits later, we are ready to tell the story…almost…

This is a fevered entry where we are still shaking and twitching from discovering a burger of an almost illegal nature.

Will Becket and Huw Gott already have the Spitalfields Hawksmoor as an established fixture, as well as other venues the Mexican Green and Red and The Marquess Tavern, among others. They know what they’re doing.

The new venue has opened in the guts of Seven Dials, Covent Garden, in a glorious converted basement in the old Combe’s Brewery, a space with a long history of steak and drinking. This is Hawksmoor announcing their arrival in the big time, high profile, no messing, International notoriety fluttering their eyelids.

Two dishes deserve mention right now, among much else.

Kimchi Burger – Devastating combination of perfect 100% Longhorn beef, with the genius addition of the fiery Korean condiment, fermented cabbage wickedness of Kimchi. F*ck me this catches you by surprise, as here we have no namby-pamby pared down, Westernised tame imitation. Chef Richard ferments his own freakin’ cabbage, and then launches into a one-man masterclass on the various stages of fermentation, and how the current batch is “not quite there yet, will be better in a week”. Lip stinging, exhilarating, addictive – this is Burger Crack.

Lobster Roll –  A whole Dorset Blue Lobster crammed into a warmed Brioche roll, garlic and hazelnut butter. Decadent, with the thrill of spending £25 on something called a “roll”. Sweet lobster, and plenty of it. The first I had in the soft opening was a work in progress, and they have refined and tweaked it, the real joy being when the roll achieves soggy critical mass and you are grappling with lobster, brioche, buttery bearnaise, and your own fingers. Worth it for the fact there is simply nothing like this in London.

We could tell you about the steaks (hey, it’s a steakhouse), the killer Chateaubriand, the Rib and the T-Bone. They are brilliant, and this has all been said before.

Oh, and the bar is bloody amazing. Proper cocktails, educated mixers, love is all over the well written list.

Sit at the bar, order the whole menu here (because you can), and take a journey through the history of The Cocktail while dousing your lips in Korean fermented cabbage – all this has never been put together in quite the same package.

Feels like an institution already. Dang those guys are clever.

Hawksmoor

SEVEN DIALS
11 Langley St.
London.
WC2H 9JG