Marylebone’s Blandford Street has acquired something of an enviable reputation in foodie circles as being the epicentre of much of London’s great dining. L’Autre Pied (which has recently lost its founder Marcus Eaves to its big brother Pied A Terre), Il Baretto and, soon, Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume pop-up, Roganic, which is one of the year’s most anticipated openings, all adorn this otherwise modest road. However, it is perhaps its most atypical offering, Trishna, which has attracted much of the attention such it opened in late 2008.
Sister restaurant of a much-acclaimed operation in Mumbai, it has attracted plaudits both for head chef Karam Sethi’s excellent and innovative cooking and for the atypically sensible prices. To put these into perspective, a set lunch of a seafood biryani or lamb curry, served with a beer or glass of wine, clocks in at a mere £10, and a five-course lunch complete with a wine flight is a bargain at a snip under £40. This fits with Sethi’s admirably avowed intent to make this a fine dining restaurant that everyone can enjoy, at any time or at any budget.
However, serious gourmands are likely to make a beeline for the ‘Taste of Trishna Koliwada Menu’, which offers a choice of five or seven courses with matching wines. Given that the most expensive means of enjoying this is £84 – barely the price of an a la carte without wine in some restaurants – this chimes perfectly with the restaurant’s ethos. The cuisine is impeccable, concentrating on a range of influences and ideas that are firmly rooted within subcontinental cooking but also offer innovative twists on old staples. The signature dish, curried Dorset brown crab, is a thing of joy and wonder, but a green chilli-flavoured hariyali sea bream, duck seekh kebab with pineapple chutney and a delectable mango rice pudding all run it extremely close. The wines, ranging from a punchy Gruner Veltliner to complement a chargrilled wild tiger brawn to an impeccable Montagny premier cru to serve the crab, are all an enormous pleasure to quaff, sip, swallow or gurgle, depending on your preference.
An evening that you might well want to be doing some gurgling or quaffing at are Trishna’s series of Wine Chap ‘Not Your Average Curry Night’ events. As the name might suggest, these – weighing in at the frankly ludicrously good value price of £45 per head – offer the restaurant’s cuisine matched with both wines and less obvious drinks, including beers, ciders and sherries. I was involved at an early pairing evening of these, and I can testify both to Tom Harrow’s – the ‘Wine Chap’ himself – almost supernatural knowledge of wine and the eclectic range of drinks on offer. It makes for an unmissably entertaining experience.
15-17 Blandford Street, London W1. www.trishnalondon.com. Wine Chap night details at www.trishnalondon.com/currynight.
