Gymkhana
This Albermarle Street knock-out is the place for a truly special feast, whether a deux or for convivial times with a group of friends. Modelled on the elite clubs found in the India of yesteryear, the tasting menu includes dishes such as wild muntjac biryani, pomegranate and mint raita, and achari paneer tikka, fig and cashew nut, corn chaat. If that’s not enough to convince you, consider this: when it first opened a decade ago, The Times critic Giles Coren was so taken with the food that he visited three times in a week because ‘Gymkhana is the best restaurant I have ever been to.’ And you should go too. Like Gymkhana? Do try its also-brilliant sister restaurant, Trishna. Book it.
The Cinnamon Club
Set inside the former Westminster Library, the book-lined Cinnamon Club is cosy yet grand, its exquisite room reason enough to book a table. Chef Vivek Singh’s menu, however, is why its clientele come back again and again. Highlights include the likes of carpaccio of home cured Shetland salmon, mustard caviar, curry leaf snow and Old Delhi style butter chicken on the bone, pilau rice, black lentils, garlic naan and fenugreek butter. Absolutely sublime. There is a new outpost at Battersea Power Station, which is great too, but we still think the original is the best. Book it.
Quilon
Michelin-starred head chef Sriram Aylur presides over the exceptional menu at Quilon in Victoria, where the onus is on the fish-heavy cuisine of Kerala and Goa. Try the lobster broth or the ‘Fisherman’s Catch’, which features pepper shrimp, crab cake, baked halibut and grilled scallop, or why not go for the beer tasting menu? Want to go off-piste? Chef Aylur will happily oblige with bespoke off-menu delicacies. Book it.
Benares
If Indian food is considered one of our national dishes, then it was only a matter of time before an inventive chef chose to marry British ingredients with Indian flavours. Sameer Taneja oversees the Michelin-starred cuisine at Benares on Berkeley Square, which includes such beauties as chicken dumpling, coeur de boeuf tomato, garlic brot, basmati rice and Scottish lobster cooked in aromatic stock, dill and pink peppercorn raita onion salad. Book it.
Veeraswarmy
Founded by an Indian princess in 1916, Veeraswarmy has recently been re-furbished to mark its 95th anniversary. A holder of a Michelin star, it is a must-visit (as is its sister restaurant Amaya) as London’s oldest Indian restaurant. Offering a range of dishes that cover much of India’s regional cuisine, favourites include sliced lamb griddled with roasted coconut and Kerala spices and speciality prawn curry from the kitchen of Raja of Travancore, with coconut & kokum flowers. Book it.
Zaika
Just across the road from Kensington Gardens, hungry Londoners will find Zaika, the very first Indian restaurant in the capital to win a Michelin star. Wood-panelled and beautifully lit, just a couple of its exceptional offerings include gilafi lamb seekh kebab and hand-dived seared scallops, coconut sauce, mango relish and spicy coral tuile. Book it.
Jamavar
Another fine Indian establishment, another Mayfair haunt. Amongst its opulent and exquisitely refined surrounds, travel the country’s culinary regions via its sublime pan-Indian tasting menus. Created by the founding family of The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts in India, its name comes from the 16th-century lace shawls of Kashmir. Try the best butter chicken you’re likely to taste, created with Suffolk corn-fed, char-grilled pulled chicken, fresh tomato and fenugreek, or why not plump for the dum nalli biryani, made with Hampshire lamb, basmati rice, crispy onions, fresh mint and raita? Book it.
BiBi
From the same stable as Gymkhana, Trishna and Brigadiers, all owned by brothers Jyotin, Karam and Sunaina Sethi, comes BiBi. The kitchen is under the auspices of chef Chet Sharma, who takes to his menu with all the precision that a former Physics PhD student at Oxford might. It is bijou, and reservations are hard to come by. But do persevere – for if you do, the likes of oyster and pear jal jeera or Devon scallop nimbu pani will be yours for the demolishing. Book it.
By Nancy Alsop
October 2023
