Review: Oudh 1722, Borough

We had one of the best Indian meals ever at Aktar Islam’s restaurant Opheem in Birmingham back in 2018 – another one of our lucky finds, a good year before he picked up his first Michelin star. Strange to read reviews from only eight years back and see £38 as the price for three courses of the best fine dining! And now Aktar Islam has finally opened up in London, at Oudh 1722 in a quiet corner of Borough.

You can enjoy a tasting menu here too, but equally you can take your pick of dishes off the wonderful looking a la carte menu, which is what we did. Reader, it was still more than £38 a head! We also started with cocktails, and their house specials are genuinely excellent with original and crystal-clear flavours. Allow me to nudge you towards the luxurious Itr-e-Aam, the punky Kasuri Martini and the fierce Mango Chutney Margarita.

For food, we started with gol goppa and a girolle shorba soup. The little crisp cases of the gol goppa were perfect, the sweetly sticky mix inside paired well with the sour tamarind juice poured in. The soup was revelatory, powerfully spiced with fragrant cinnamon and earthy notes, elevating rather than hiding the mushrooms. Next up was a lamb gilawat kebab, a unique preparation with a patty of lush lamb soft enough to be spreadable onto the delicately charred flatbread, so thin it felt like a napkin in the hand.

Our second kebab dish was chicken, which arrived dramatically with the clawed foot still attached. I wondered whether we might have ordered velociraptor by mistake! It was a big one. Also a lovely specimen, brined and then cooked on the coals to have a wonderfully smoky outside and juicy pink interior. The gentle creamy sauce was jam-packed with bright flavours of cardamom and cumin, the veg and salad a nice accompaniment, each nicely dressed.

For mains we picked a dry slow-cooked goat curry, a cauliflower curry and some mushroom rice. The goat was a smoky stunner, like bonfire night in a dish, with a lovely hum of black cardamom (I think?) running through it, and the meat quite sturdy and satisfyingly goat-y. The cauliflower was a great contrast, nicely roasted and doused in a mouth blasting fruity-sour gravy with a good tang of mustard through it. Even the mushroom rice was a memorable bowl of loveliness, with plenty of umami fungi flavours and a really clear note of warm saffron running right through it.

Absolutely zero room for dessert – even though we’d ordered one dish less than they recommended, all were generous and we were completely, happily, stuffed. The meal wasn’t cheap – you might spend £55-60 each on food – but it was the best Indian dining in the country for my money, well worth seeking out.