This superb Indian restaurant from acclaimed chef Rohit Ghai is currently running a fabulous Christmas menu. If you’ve been very, very good this year, you should reward yourself with a visit

An end of terrace house in a side road is not normally where you’d expect to find a top restaurant. The building is almost identical to one that I rented a room in back in the 1980s, in the then unfashionable Camberwell, and it feels rather odd to be ringing the doorbell.

Yes, you don’t just push open the door here, you press the bell as if arriving for a private dinner party. And that’s rather how it feels as we’re charmingly shown into the front room to be comfortably seated next to the fireplace. It’s extremely relaxed and cosy, Chelsea types abound, from crusty old chaps dining with the memsahib, to not so young men trying to look young. I like it a lot.

Rohit is renowned for his exciting and stylish take on Indian food, he won a Michelin star at Jamavar in Mayfair, and he has ambitions here. The food is stunningly presented and beautifully balanced.

He has three festive menus, the Signature, the Vegetarian and the Hunter’s. The latter is, as you might guess, centred around game – guinea fowl, pheasant, partridge etc. Chef once cooked in luxury hunting lodge hotels in India.

There is not the usual, and understandable,  obligation for the table to all order the same tasting menu, but even though we are just two people we feel we should stick to just one menu because otherwise the table is going to be a sea of dishes.

Each menu can be paired with a thoughtful wine flight, but we decide to stay old skool with glasses of gloriously chilled Cobra beer.

An amuse of an expresso cup of soup with a masala puff is straightaway stunning. Rich and delicious, I wanted a whole bowl of it,  but I think less is more on this one. We also had the papadum selection to keep us busy, served with a remarkable pineapple chutney, some yoghurt blushed with beetroot, and a mango chutney  – because you have to have a mango chutney, it’s the law.

On we go to the first dish, prawn masala where the prawns have been coated in sesame seeds and peanut (thus not a dish for anyone with allergies) and deep fried before being served in a spiky and fragrant sauce and topped with coconut and roscoff onion, the sought after sweet pink onion from Brittany,  the one that was once sold door to door by those blokes on bikes in striped shirts. A squeeze of lime brings it all together perfectly.

It’s followed by tandoored salmon set against mooli, the crispy white radish, and some raita. The salmon is cooked perfectly so it is still soft and fresh inside against the spicy coating that the raita tempers well. The fresh subtle pepperiness of the mooli is an excellent contrast

I’m sort of regretting not going for the wine pairing now, it would have been interesting, but these thoughts are driven from my head by the arrival of a lamb chop also tandooried but with black cumin.

What a chop it is; beautifully spiced and perfectly pink. I think lamb is always best seared outside very fast and I often try to replicate it at home, but nothing delivers the necessary scorching heat like a tandoor. A herby quinoa salad is refreshing, tiny pops of black mustard seed make it slightly spicy.

There are two choices for the ‘curry’ main so as we are two we order both. Chicken Tikka Masala is not your gloopy high street version of course, red with kashmiri chill and perfectly spiced. It is both familiar and exciting all at the same time. 

Pan roasted duck with sour tamarind, masala gravy and curry leaf is good,  but I wonder if duck is really suitable for spicy saucing, it doesn’t really have the power to stand up to it. It is a very good bit of duck though and cooked and rested perfectly.

Excellent basmati ‘witches fingers’, fluffy breads and a tadka dal make the table complete. We run out of energy towards the end but are determined not to waste any of it

As there was a choice of two desserts we again had one each and had a taste of each other’s. Desserts are often not a strong point in ‘Indian’ restaurants, but Date Pecan Cinnamon – a date and pecan pudding, with a smoked date cigar and cinnamon kulfi, was quite brilliant Jaggery and coconut crumble added crunch and the hot pistachio and caramel sauce was brilliantly decadent.

As too was slow-cooked pineapple with a tropical coconut sorbet and pink pepper, another visual treat.

It was a remarkable lunch, one to rave about and remember. By the way, Kutir has private rooms upstairs for any business wishing to royally entertain its clients this Christmas. This is a superb restaurant literally on every level.

10 Lincoln Street, Chelsea, UK, London, SW3 2TS

kutir.co.uk


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