For most restaurants, no matter how lofty their ambitions or discerning the clientele, sheer practical market forces will be the driving force behind at least one or two dishes, whether it's the chic Northern gastropub reluctantly offering fish and chips and a burger alongside their otherwise exquisitely tasteful offering of local game and foraged mushrooms, or the thrusting young modern Sichuan determined to introduce the timid local population to the delights of Old Woman Pock-Marked Beancurd and Man and Wife Offal Slices but can't make the numbers work without adding a few things like Chicken in Black Bean sauce to keep the regulars happy. It's not anyone's fault, it's just how the world works.
But what if I told you that there's a restaurant in Sheen, of all places, that has somehow hit upon a magic formula of serving something for everyone whilst keeping the standard of cooking so high across the board that you can essentially throw a round of darts at the menu from 8ft and still end up with the meal of your life? Where all ingredients, plant or animal, are treated with intelligence and respect they deserve and not a single thing is anything less than essential, never mind tasty?
Now, I have not - yet - tried everything that Black Salt have to offer, but I feel confident in saying you can't go wrong here partly on the basis that when I have asked fans of the place (of which there are many) which are the must-order items, everyone came back with something different, and also because the 8 or 9 items we did order were largely perfect. Starting with this selection of poppadums, so delicate and light that they almost dissolved in the mouth, and three chutneys, all made fresh in-house, from a superb fresh lime pickle to a gorgeously rich and intriguing mango without a hint of that cloying sweetness you get in the mass produced stuff.
As I've said (and I'm likely to say again), not much at Black Salt was less than perfect, but the really astonishing achievement of the place is to elevate the most unlikely and unassuming ingredients - in this case beetroot - to such a level that every dish could call itself a must-order. Inside a beautifully delicate and grease-free breadcrumb casing was a soft, beguilingly spiced filling of beetroot mixture, as rich and rewarding as anything that's ever come out of a fryer. Beside it a neat little squiggle of summer berry chutney, which was just as remarkable in a different way, the kind of clever fruit/savoury sauce that you'd expect from the very finest of fine dining kitchens.
Mixed bhajiya, similarly, got everything right, from the almost honeycomb-fragile texture of the fried vegetables (a balanced mix of kale, spinach, potato and onion, no one element dominating) to the vegetal loveliness of the mint chutney. They really do seem to be masters of texture at Black Salt - the way the fried dishes dance around the mouth is quite something.
Channa papdi chaat had an even more addictive set of textures, from the chunky potato and chickpeas underneath to the crisp of the sev sprinkled on top, through the ribbons of tamarind, coriander and chilli chutneys that bound it all together. There's something extremely satisfying about a dish that cools with yoghurt at the same time as hitting with a punch of chilli, it's a fantastic medley of effects.
You'll notice that we haven't had any meat or seafood yet - don't worry that will come - but it's worth repeating that you really can't go wrong at Black Salt with any dish, and that includes anything marked with a (V) or even, in the case of the beetroot fritter and papads, (VE). Even what would in lesser hands be a throwaway side of spinach boasted a healthy punch of garlic and yet another masterful mix of spices.
But yes, we did order some protein. This is 'best end' lamb chop, and if you're unsure what 'best end' means with regards to lamb, well so was I but I can only assume it means 'ludicrously tender and brilliantly cooked', as that's how it arrived. It had clearly been close to some hot coals, as the odd bit of charring on the bone and edges proved, but the meat was so yielding it felt almost reconstituted, like some kind of Heston Blumenthal experimental lamb made of lamb. Ok, that doesn't make them sound amazing does it, but they honestly were.
Prawns were also - here's that word again - perfect. Cooked to sweetly tender, in a garlic-chilli-tomato sauce that presented the seafood well without dominating, they had more of that delicate charring from the coals and a lovely firm-but-not-chewy bite. Oh and the garlic and tomato chutney they came with was pretty special, too.
If there's one aspect of the offering at Black Salt that's less than stellar, it's perhaps the bread. Having been told the naans were nothing better than OK, we had decided to go for a round of paratha instead. Unfortunately, rather than the delicate folds of swirly pastry we were expecting (and had, unfortunately for Black Salt, been treated to at Hawker's Kitchen in King's Cross a week or so earlier) these were little better than plain flatbreads, stodgy and uninteresting and not very paratha-y at all.
But who cares, because all we really needed was a vehicle to scoop up mouthfuls of their dense, buttery dal makhani, and that was a job even faintly uninteresting paratha could live up to. In fact, perhaps a more pastry-like paratha would have been too rich matched with the dal. Maybe they know what they're doing after all.
Most wines were around the £30 mark, in fact I think there could have been one even cheaper, which is pretty commendable for a London restaurant in 2022. In fact, all the above astonishing food, most of which easily matches the best out of the kitchens at Michelin starred places in Mayfair and Chelsea, came to £34pp, still just under £40 each even with service added on which they didn't even ask for. And much as I love Jamavar, and Kutir and the like, and appreciate that rents in Sheen will not be in the same category as Zone 1, it does beg the question, if you can eat this well for £40pp, why would you ever bother eating anywhere else?
The answer to that hypothetical question, perhaps, comes in the form of a little place in Ewell called Dastaan, sister restaurant to Black Salt, and which is spoken of in hushed tones to those lucky enough to have visited both, as "even better". And if this seems impossible given what you've just read, well I agree, but I am determined to discover the truth for myself as soon as is realistically possible. In the meantime, I will have my memories of Black Salt to love and relive, an unassuming and comfortable little spot on Upper Richmond Road serving some of the best Indian food in the entire country.
9/10
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