Dishoom, 12 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2 (020 7420 9320). Meal for two, including wine and service £70
Dishoom, a new, self-styled Bombay Café in London's West End, feels like the answer to a question nobody is asking. That question is: where do you go to eat if you fancy Indian food but are tired of your local curry house? For if Dishoom feels like anything, it ain't a slice of old Bombay. It is instead a hunk of corporate image management, a fully realised "concept" which could be flat-packed and distributed to every brand-heavy high street in the land. Check out the black and white tiled floors and marble tabletops, the grey banquettes and slabs of oak panelling. Most of all, check out the framed vintage Bollywood-style adverts, which look as though they were bought by the yard.
The most curious aspect of the place is that it is here, a grilled lobster's throw from The Ivy. Granted, there are other such mid-market chains next door, including a Jamie's Italian, but that only adds to the sense of dislocation. It feels like the sort of place that ought to be in Basingstoke town centre. I suspect that it soon will be.
Because it appears to be a success. For irritating reasons known only to themselves, they refuse to take bookings, and when we get there it is heaving. We are told there is a 15-minute wait. If this were my own time, I would have turned on my heels. There is very little in London, food-wise, that is genuinely worth queuing for. But it is not my own time, so we settle down by the door. The room, with its open kitchen and bustling, young, mostly non-Indian waiters, has a jolly buzz and when they bring all of us in the queue a glass of hot chai – sweet milky tea flavoured with cardamom – I begin to hope that everything will be fine.
As we discover when we eventually get to our banquette, there are some good things here, with the emphasis on the word "some". As well as a few breakfast options, there are filled rotis, a couple of soups, salads, grills, biryanis and so on, all for sharing. From the list marked "small plates", the most successful is the Dishoom calamari, even if it is dependent on the high street fast-food virtues of breadcrumbs, deep-fat frying and a slick of something tooth-achingly sweet. The squid itself is tender.
The chicken biryani, cooked in a pastry-sealed pot, was terrific on the aromatics, the waft of cardamom, clove and turmeric hitting my olfactory bulb before a mouthful met the tongue, though it was a little dry. Their dark, pungent sticky lamb chops rubbed with black pepper and chillies were very good indeed, the outside deeply charred, the meat still pink. I would come back here for a plate of these. Or perhaps two, maybe three with a friend.
Other than that, oh dear. Bombay sausages are what you would get if a mildly ambitious home cook decided they wanted to make Indian food but only had a pack of chipolatas to hand. It was, as we call it in the restaurant reviewing trade, A Very Bad Idea. Their cheesy naan promising "melted cheddar inside" sounded awful, which is was why I ordered it. They lived down to my expectations. It is the kind of thing made by drunken students at 3am when all they have is the remains of yesterday's takeaway and a hunk of Cathedral City. (The plain naan was better.) Their house black daal lacked depth and finesse. Worst of all, under the knowing "Ruby Murray" heading – a house curry of the day – was a sludge of puréed spinach and paneer, which looked like something that had come out of the wrong end of a baby who had just had a change of diet.
We passed on desserts – mostly just iced things in bowls or on sticks. Even so, with a couple of pleasing non-alcoholic cocktails, we ran up a bill of £56. So if you had a bottle of wine or beers you would quickly be paying £70 for two, which is quite a lot more than your high street curry house. And for what exactly? Better cooking? No, not often. Nicer service and more of a buzz? Well yes, I suppose so. If this is what you look for in a restaurant, then you can happily anticipate the arrival of a Dishoom in your neighbourhood. The rest of us will look to get our Indian jollies elsewhere.
This week Jay has also been…
eating a lot of Haribo Tangfastics. They do exactly what they say on the bag.
Side order: carbon copy
Misleading PR claim of the week award goes to Ogilvy PR for pimping a new gaff called Otarian in Soho as "the planet's first low-carbon restaurant". What? Apart from the three- year-old Acorn House, which has audited every part of its output to the lowest carbon footprint? Otarian may well be environmentally virtuous, but it is not the first to make this claim, and to do so is tacky. As to Otarian's food? No idea. They listed their environmental achievements but didn't bother to include a menu. Tells you everything you need to know.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
