Review: Kachori, Elephant & Castle

There are two demons inside me. One of them was saying “hey, wow, this new area around the back of Elephant & Castle is looking pretty cool now… nice urban park, handful of hip street food options, couple of sharp looking pubs, couple of glossy modern restaurants.” The other was saying “yeah, but where exactly are all the people who lived here before but now couldn’t afford even the tiniest one-bed flat in these shiny new high-rises going to live?”

I’m not a social issues blogger, though, so I’m going to chicken out of that conversation and talk about Kachori, one of the glossy modern restaurants here. It’s a big place, loads of covers, but comfy enough and they didn’t want to flip our 7pm table. There’s plenty on the menu, a mixture of more modern Indian street-food inspired stuff and curry house classics.

The best starter was boned guinea fowl off the tandoori grill. This was beautifully soft from its warmly spiced marinade and smoky from the grill. Tempered curd rice was a mildly pleasing accompaniment, new to me. We tried both of their kachoris, with a good sturdy crisp shell and – in my case – plenty of warm and green spices. I’m not sure there was much point in labelling it as a “truffled” kachori, the spices comfortably overwhelmed any hint of truffle flavour. Good though.

We had some good and not so good mains. My goat varuval was a dark and earthy dish, chunks of flavoursome meat in a dry sauce full of warming spices. Maureen’s Cod Malay Meen could have been re-badged “Cod in Cream of Tomato soup” as the smooth orangey sauce was terrifically mild in flavour to the point of being quite unappealing. But then, we had a very good tadka dal on the side, packed with garlicky and smoky flavours. The cauliflower side also had good flavour but was a bit over-salted.

Desserts were very worthy. My mango and cardamom kulfi was exactly right, plenty of perfume but not over-sweet. The salt caramel, jaggery and peanut parfait was exactly as good as it sounds, like an extremely elegant and fragrant Snickers ice cream.

You’d probably pay £45 each for food before drinks, so this isn’t a cheap meal. On the whole Kachori feels like a decent option for modern Indian, but it doesn’t sit at the top table of spice-driven restaurants with the ones I return to regularly.