Review: Gopal’s Corner at Victoria Market Hall

I can still remember with intense clarity the best ever Thai green curry I have experienced. It was in a fairly random restaurant in Satun, a town on the southern border with Malaysia that had no interest for foreigners except as possibly a place to get a ferry over the border to Langkawi. It was like there were two dials, one labelled “fragrant” and the other “rich/earthy”, and both had been dialled up to beyond MAX yet miraculously still balanced each other. Instead of rice, it was served with a soft and flaky roti that tore into papery chunks and sopped up the greenish sauce perfectly.

Which is the tenuous connection with Gopal’s Corner, a Malay rather than Thai place, serving rich curries with roti upstairs in Victoria Market Hall. If you haven’t been, VMH is a buzzing food court with about a dozen offerings from tacos to bao to burgers and it’s about 2 minutes walk from Victoria station. Frankly it’s an extremely useful place to know.

And although I haven’t tried everything, I reckon Gopal’s Corner is probably the best food there. The curries do the same thing as that green curry in Satun: dial up both fragrance and rich earthiness to max. The roti are homely and flaky and tear into papery chunks that sop up the spicy sauce perfectly. The meat in the curry is almost secondary, but soft and good.

It’s also cheap; a bowl of supper for a few quid. See you there.