since my friend grace fled the midlands for the big smoke, i enjoy visiting london for work even more than i did before. she never fails to find us somewhere incredible to go for dinner and dishoom bombay cafe was no exception.
like me, grace loves lots of seafood and interesting veggie dishes (i have a bit of a paneer addiction at the moment) and so i let her take the lead as a dishoom regular/expert/obsessive. everything comes out as and when it is ready so we just chose a few dishes between us. first up was the pau bhaji (£3.90). the toasted pau bun was gorgeous and we kept dipping into the chunky mashed veg sauce for the whole meal.
next came the orka fries (£3.50) and the dishoom calamari (£5.20). i hadn't tried orka fries aka lady fingers before and don't have anything to compare them to. however they were really crispy and delicately spiced which seemed right to me. the indian style calamari was out of this world...
a little picture of the flavours dancing on my plate whilst i waited for the more main dishes.
next to arrive was the mattar paneer (£7.50) and chef's covent garden special (£14.90) which was soft shell crab in an ensemble of tomato, ginger and coconut milk. to accompany (as if we needed it...) we went for steamed basmati rice (£2.20) and a garlic naan (£1.90). not bad prices for london, hey?