Bombay Brasserie

The Bombay Brasserie is one of the stalwarts of the highly competitive London Indian restaurant scene having been around for something like 27 years. This in itself should say something about the quality of the place. The restaurant has recently undergone a refurbishment, maintaining the grandeur of old but feeling distinctly more polished and contemporary.

On a midweek evening we were warmly greeted by the very well turned out door man, led into a small but stylish bar and offered the option of a drink before taking up our table. Declining, to go straight to the food, we walked through the fabulously ornate dining room to our fabulously comfortable seats. What started as a mainly empty space soon filled up, by 8pm the place was easily two thirds full of rather well turned out diners. Service was impeccable, waiting staff were thoroughly knowledgeable and polite. Our party included an eight year old child who was treated beautifully, encouraged to discuss the menu, asked about how she found the food and included throughout the evening. This is unusual for a restaurant of this quality where it would be more unusual to feel uncomfortable bringing children.

On to the food. Snacks with our drinks, a twist on the usual popadoms, were fresh and tasty. These were followed by an amuse bouche, good but not outstanding, the fact I am not sure what it was tells you it was fairly forgetable. Much better was our appetisers consisting of the most tender and delicately garlic spiced chicken tikka ‘dhoodia’ and lamb kebabs on innovative sugar cane sticks. The latter arrived standing up in a coriander dipping sauce and were a delight to look at as well as taste.

The mains included fall apart tender lamb shank in a saffron sauce (Dum Ki Nalli) with an unusual twist on a potato dauphinoise – really excellent; succulent duck with kumquat and ginger chutney; pilau rice with chicken; and a divine yellow lentil dahl, rich without being swimming in oil. All dishes were beautifully presented and tasted delicious, how pleasant to eat at an Indian restaurant where the dishes were a surprise veering away from the traditional high street curry house.

Less to write home about with the desserts – competent but nothing outstanding, the mango sorbet was without doubt made with delicious alphonso mangos but needed something a little sharper to offset the rich sweetness of the fruit. The strawberry tart was absolutely beautiful to look at but a little bland after the flavours of the previous courses.

Prices are as you would expect, somewhat high. It would be easy to come away having spent £50 a head plus if you do not hold back and add alcohol into the mix. However, certainly manageable for a special occaision, and there is the Sunday brunch option at £22 a head - this might be a more affordable introduction to the place!

Our evening at the Bombay Brasserie was a delight: wonderful service, food both easy on the eye and the taste buds and sumptuous surroundings. No run of the mill Indian restaurant, but something that makes you and the evening feel a little special.

Leandra Box, MyVillage

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It is many years since I have been to the Bombay Brasserie, which opened in 1982 and was the first restaurant to bring up-market Indian cooking to London. Part of a hotel owned by the Taj Group (the leading hotel chain in India), the Bombay Brasserie lifted Indian cooking above the high street tandoori that was all that most of us were used to in the UK. I used to be a regular here, but somehow fell out of the habit of coming about a decade ago. It is tempting to review only the latest, trendiest restaurants, but I thought it would be interested to see how a long-established place was keeping up with the times. The décor is certainly little changed, with a grand “last days of the Raj” feel to it. We ate in the large and airy conservatory this evening, which adjoins the main dining room. Tables are large and generously spaced, with white linen tablecloths and napkins. It does feel rather dated now in terms of decor.

I’m not sure of the exact capacity of the restaurant but it can certainly seat well over 100 people at a time, and was pretty busy this evening. There is a short but decent wine list, with wines mostly in the £20 - £40 range and including some good New World choices. The menu spans the different regional cuisines of India, from Punjabi dishes through to snacks from Gujerat and seafood from Goa.

Popadoms are served with chutneys that are not from a jar: tomato, a lime pickle and a slightly sour mango chutney. I didn’t find these to be especially great pickles, but at least they took the trouble to make them. I began with fenugreek chicken tikka, a pair of large pieces of chicken marinaded and then cooked in the tandoor. The chicken was cooked through properly, and indeed a little longer than idea, leaving the meat a bit dry. The marinade was subtle but there was a hint of fenugreek; personally I could have done with a little more use of spices. The little salad next to the chicken was past its best (1/10). Much better was sev batata puri, poori, and mixed up with potatoes, sprouted lentils, gramflour straws, yoghurt and tamarind chutney. This was excellent, the pooris crisp, the spicing immediate (again, perhaps a little more chilli would have been beneficial) and the yogurt and tamarind keeping the dish moist (3/10).

Chicken biryani was reasonable, the rice nicely fragrant, flavoured with saffron and mace, but the chicken was a little dried-out (1/10). Prawn balchow was better, a Goan dish with four large prawns cooked with chillies and vinegar, the prawns very nicely cooked and tasting a little of charcoal, suggesting a traditional tandoor than the gas one used more often these days (2/10). A gobi mattur was good, with both peas and cauliflower retaining their texture properly (2/10). Most main courses are offered with a yellow dhal and a potato curry, which unfortunately both were distinctly tepid, presumably because they are kept separately and brought round by a waitress rather than being freshly prepared in the kitchen. A garlic naan was a little hard, and a regular one served at the next table looked much better.

Service was a rather mixed bag, with plenty of staff around but a few elements of clumsiness, at least at our table. The prices are the big problem here. Main course dishes are mostly around £23, starters £11, vegetables side dishes a scary £10, though breads are just £2.50. With two beers, some lassi and two courses only the bill still weighed in at £61 per person. The conservatory is a pretty spot, but with places like Haandi only a short distance away at a fraction of the price, I can now recall why I fell out of love with the Bombay Brasserie. I was rather dreading that the food might have declined, but in truth the food is not bad, and good in places (though they need to fix the vegetable side dishes getting cold, something I remember being a problem a decade ago). Unfortunately the bill has headed inexorably upwards, and I suspect that injecting change here will be like turning around an ocean liner. This was visit was interesting from a nostalgia perspective, but you can find better value, high grade Indian food elsewhere.

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"This is a stunning restaurant, just opposite Gloucester Road tube station, complete with murals of Indian beach scenes, a grand piano and friendly waiters. But, be warned, these lush surroundings don't come cheap, with starters being around the ?8 mark, and main courses coming in at ?18 or thereabouts. But the food is quite special - the sev batata puri which I started with consisted of flat crunchy biscuits, yoghurt, a tamarind chutney, potato and sev, and was really tangy and delicious. I then went for one of the vegetarian thalis - which basically saved me the bother of having to choose something from the extensive menu - and several of the people I was with did the same. And I wasn't disappointed - a generous mound of rice came with five or six small portions of different veggie curries - all very different but offering a perfect taste of the range of food on offer. The crispy deep fried okra, grated paneer and sweet baby potatoes went down particularly well! Although this is a fantastic restaurant, the prices mean it is definitely one for special occasions - or if someone else is paying!"