Cinnamon Soho, 5 Kingley Street, London W1B 5PF

Cinnamon Soho, 5 Kingley Street, London W1B 5PF
05/05/12

http://www.cinnamon-kitchen.com/soho-home

She said…I was craving some Indian food and had been looking forward to the Cinnamon experience since reading the menu online. Having read a review I knew beforehand that the plates would be small so to order a good mix of dishes. We arrived via the Kingley Street entrance though later realised there is another ‘main’ entrance which is prettier from Kingley Court. We didn’t pay much attention to the setting as we were both starving and so got stuck in ordering a mix of 5 small dishes which consisted of crab and vegetable balls, tandoori salmon, mushroom on toast and mathri with a roasted aubergine dip. Except for the mathri (which were essentially corn-like fatty snacks with a mis-matched sweet and rather chunky dip) and the vegetable balls which were ok, the other plates were fantastic: soft crab in a crispy batter with a perfect sauce, succulent salmon which melts in the mouth and a sort of curried mushroom that was over too soon. For ‘mains’ I went for a pea and cauliflower kichri but they got the order wrong and brought me a fish one instead. I didn’t want to wait for the correct order so took the fish one which was lovely – and was pleasantly surprised when they did not charge me for this on the bill for getting it wrong, exemplifying their already excellent customer service. I recommend the sweet lassi to drink which complimented the whole meal. It was only when we had digested our food that I took a proper look around the room and did wonder why a bit more effort didn’t go into the design. The dining room is fairly stark and lacks personality with dark wooden furniture and generic art in frames; a little more style would have been the icing on an already delicious, Anglo-Indian cake. Prices? Mmm, bit steep given the size of the dishes but worth it.

He said… If I didn’t know that this was part of the Cinnamon Club Group then I probably would not have tried this excellent restaurant. It doesn’t have much of a street presence, and the space is small and dark and really quite dull. But its daddy has a big reputation, so I was excited when I stumbled across this place on a walk around town. There are a lot of Indian restaurants in London (most of them Bangladeshi, it turns out), and some of them serve-up incredibly good food at an unbelievably low price. But Cinnamon is one of the few that does something really distinctive. The basic premise here is the best of British fused with the best of Asian. Not since the 60s would you see an Indian menu that included ‘safe’ options like mushroom on toast, or seafood pie. Except that here they’re not a concession to fearful diners, but instead a chance to reinvent and even improve on classics, bringing them bang-up-to-date for kids raised on exotica, like tamarind or garam masala. You will never eat a better mushrooms on toast than you will here. And that’s the reason to come to Cinnamon; the space may be uninspiring, the prices seemingly high, but you can’t get this kind of inspiring cooking in many other places. The portions are on the small side, so order more than the usual one starter one main.