Namaaste Kitchen, London
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It’s astonishing that Sabbir Karim still has a day job considering he started his London restaurant empire just to pursue his passion for modern Indian cuisine. But as an airline purser he’s still serving passengers in the sky and bringing back influences from his travels to his latest restaurant in Camden Town.
Namaaste Kitchen is not a regional restaurant so much as a showcase for the best India has to offer. Sabbir has amassed both royal recipes and others for beloved Indian street snacks, like behlpuri from Mumbai’s Chowpatty Beach. And thanks to the charcoal grill set up at the far end of the restaurant he also has some of the great blackened meats and hot breads for which the north of India is particularly famous.
Don’t miss the Peshwari lamb chops on the list of mains, which are simply superlative, as were the flaky paratha and date and ginger naan which accompanied them. Sea bass with coconut and mustard seeds, a Goan speciality, was also successful, although a thick breast of barbary duck a little less so. Starters of spiced soft-shell crab, with a fig and prune chutney accompaniment, and huge king prawns with apricot chutney were so generous, three of us could do no more than taste the five dishes between us - although mysteriously, not a single lamb chop remained when the plates were cleared.
It was good to see a proper dish of dal makhani made from black lentils, all too rare outside the subcontinent, and a raita made with pomegranates rather than cucumber rang the changes nicely. Kachumber-type salads dressed with lime juice made a fresh accompaniment to every dish, although I was not sure the okra with fresh mango worked as well as traditional bhindi bhaji. Cobra on tap to wash all this succulent food down was very absolutely spot on.
Note there is a chef’s table seating eight facing the grill for those who want to catch all the kitchen action, and another branch - Salaam Namaste - in the heart of Bloomsbury. If business gets much hotter, BA will just have to do without Sabbir, a solicitous host whose presence seems needed to ensure the service lives up to the fine quality of the food and the demands of the picky Primrose Hill clientele.
Contact tel: + 44 207 485 5977
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