While it would be incorrect to argue that most of the Indian subcontinent’s meals are brown, it’s clear to see how a meal at Lucknow forty-nine, the second London organization from chef Dhruv Mittal, might make you attain that end. It’s a parade of dishes which, on a coloration chart, might run the gamut from “dark earth” via “silted river bed” all of the manners to “plowed field.” I have no trouble with brown food; some of the most excessive, strident dishes I have ever eaten have been brown. In cooking, caramelization is your buddy, and caramel is brown. Others feel otherwise. This may also explain why, halfway through dinner, I locate myself watching a lightly sauced cauliflower dressed with a skinny scab of shimmering silver leaf.
Some will protest that valuable metals as meal ornament are cultural, with a venerable record in Indian cuisine. But I’m now not in India. I’m on Maddox Street on the threshold of London’s Mayfair, where there’s already too much unnecessary gilding. I wouldn’t say I like ingesting matter, which serves no dietary purpose. I wouldn’t say I like eating things that might be destined to tour straight through me so that the product at the alternative gives up and turns out so glittery you could grasp it on a Christmas tree if, say, Tim Burton becomes in charge of the decorations.
Apart from offering the opportunity to make poo jokes in an eating place assessment – by no means to be missed – there’s a more serious point right here. How will we examine a restaurant like this, where the large bill pays for things like a silver leaf on the cauliflower, which has nothing to do with the meals? To start with, Lucknow 49 is a very comfy restaurant. The upholstered bench seating is stacked with throw cushions and bolsters – so much eed that I have to chuck a few off to create a which to wriggle my full-size arse. There is olive inexperienced paintwork, a hand-published ornament around the archway into the returned eating room, and blocky floral prints. It’s a self-conscious take on the home, the cozy fashion that expenses right cash. Accordingly, the most inexpensive wine bottle is £29 for something drinkable, the call of which I can’t forget, and the dinner invoice for two will, without difficulty, smash £one hundred thirty.
Let’s prevent there for a moment. The reality that you can go to a serviceable high-road curry house and pay buttons for indeterminate animal protein batch-cooked in a sparkling sauce, to repeat on you for days, does no longer imply food from the Indian tradition must in no way cost as a great deal as that from France, Italy or Japan. If you trust that, you dismiss the whole Indian lifestyle as somehow inferior. You will want to have a long, hard talk with yourself.
The food wishes to be worth it. At Lucknow forty-nine, some of it is quite a good deal, and many aren’t. (The £nine paratha wraps stuffed with grilled lamb for takeaway at lunchtime may be the nice deal). It all comes with a compelling narrative: after the Mughal empire’s fall, the royal family and their chefs shifted from Delhi to Lucknow. The double lamb chops cooked over charcoal here are big, meaty beasts with a quality char, hot, crisped fat, and the growing fragrance of newly roasted spices—the lucky royal circle of relatives. The online menu indicates that they cost £12.50 for two, which is the right amount for this quantity and high-quality meat. I expect it will become too expensive because these high-quality chops are surely £sixteen at the eating place. There are some examples of this, which a polite character would describe as unlucky. The menu has been updated, seeing that my go-to.
