Kolamba, Soho

I was convinced I had been before to the building that Kolamba occupies. Home to a constantly shifting and evolving - for better or for worse - row of shops and restaurants, Kingly St is one of those places that even if you're a regular Soho wanderer you will always spot a new addition or somewhere with "Coming soon!" on the hoarding, and you never really know what's going to happen next.

In fact, I hadn't ever been here before - for some reason I thought it was where short-lived but much-loved BBQ spot Shotgun once stood, but a look on Google Streetview reveals that was a few doors down. And I'm afraid I avoided the site when it was seafood proto-chain Claw, mainly because - and correct me if I'm being unreasonable here - I tend to think anywhere naming itself after a part of a crab, and using a crab as its logo, should serve at least some fresh crab* (the only thing they had on offer when I peered at the menu was soft-shelled crab, which doesn't count).

Anyway to Kolamba, an altogether more enticing prospect, the latest smart, mid-range Sri Lankan restaurant (after Hoppers, and Paradise, and probably loads more I'm unaware of) to bless central London. And the evening got off to a cracking (pun intended) start with some tastefully bijou pappadums and some superbly balanced chutneys, one date and lime with a brilliant sour/chilli note, and one "Malay Pickle", earthier and sweeter. There seems to be an endless capacity for the Indian subcondinent to dazzle with the inventiveness and variety of their pickled goods.

Hot Butter cuttlefish consisted of nicely bouncy little parcels of squid in a bubbly coating, doused in chilli and nestled amongst various fried vegetables. A "bar-room classic" so the menu says, and who am I to argue - I can not think of a single table in any pub in the UK that wouldn't look better with this colourful little dish served alongside a nice cold pint.

Black pepper prawn fry were equally enjoyable, but would have been completely useless as a bar snack thanks to the utter mess you have to make of yourself to eat them. I actually made an elbows-forward trip to the bathroom sink to clean myself up twice in the few minutes or so it took to eat these tasty little fellas, such was the ability of that rich, dark sauce to attach itself to my forearms.

Cashew Fry was only slightly underwhelming thanks to needing a bit of extra crunch from the nuts themselves. Perhaps this was entirely deliberate, and if so I'm not going to argue, but I always prefer cashews with a crunch rather than a chew, and I probably always will. And although the caramelised onions they came in with were nice, as was the beguiling spice mix, this was essentially a bowl of onions and nuts for £10.

More interesting was a Seeni Sambol, a dark, salty and umami-packed dish of onion and dried Maldive fish, with a flavour profile utterly impossible not to fall in love with.

Price, though, is something I'm going to have to start being a bit more reasonable about when it comes to judging restaurant menus. Not so long ago, a dish of 4 prawns for £20 would have had me whingeing too, but given what I know about how restaurant profits work (which is very little, but bear with me) they're almost certainly charging what they need to given the cost of ingredients, energy, staff, you bloody name it these days.

This is Jaggery Beef, a Sri Lankan staple which involves cheaper cuts of beef slow-cooked in a variety of different herbs, spices and vegetables with coconut milk and "jaggery", some kind of unrefined sugar I think but for which a brief Google is a bit inconclusive. It was fantastic though, with large, wobbly chunks of jellified fat which dissolved in the mouth.

It was almost worth ordering the tomato sambol for the resulting photo, which was so vibrantly colourful it almost gleamed like a light source in that dark Soho basement. It wasn't just about looks though - the mix of tomatoes, green chilli and lime is a reliable one, and we happily polished this off.

Finally, the house string hoppers, lovely in every way, from the bouncy fresh noodles to the tasteful bowls of coconut milk curry and fluffy Pol Sambol, a great (and - relatively - inexpensive) way of padding out your appetite at the end of the meal and ensuring we wobbled off into the Soho night nicely sated.

With food this good, you'd find it very difficult to not have a great night at Kolamba but in the interests of managing expectations we did think the tables uncomfortably close together, and a bit too small for the amount of space-hungry dishes that tend to arrive all at once. Not a dealbreaker, of course, just worth mentioning. And you'll have to decide for yourself, too, whether this objectively good but determinedly unfussy menu is worth paying the Soho premium for if you live a little closer to Harrow (Gana, Palm Beach) or Tooting (Apollo Banana Leaf, Jaffna House). Though I expect these days those aren't as cheap as they used to be, either.

Anyway there's plenty to love at Kolamba and not much to dislike, and its arrival in London is very much welcome. For as long as this city continues to play host to such a startling variety of cuisines and cultures, it will continue to produce restaurants like this, serving South Asian staples with the odd local twist, in smart and friendly surroundings, with attentive and pleasant staff. And really, what more could you want from a night out?

8/10

*Although a glance at a more recent menu online suggests they've fixed that particular supply problem.

I was invited to Kolamba and didn't see a bill.

Mowgli, Liverpool

There is very little to dislike about Mowgli, and so the fact I came away from an evening there with little more than a vague sense of disappointment has provoked a certain amount of soul-searching. Could it be that the room was just too busy and loud, the clientele just slightly over-represented by hen-, stag- and office-do's, the service just a dash the wrong side of brusque? Objectively the food was fresh and competent enough, and yet could it have just felt a bit by-the-numbers and flat because of the atmosphere in the room, or was it really missing a bit of heart? I hate situations like this, when I know I'm not happy but can't say exactly why. Makes a bit of a mockery of the business of writing a food blog.

So I'll do my best. As I said, nothing about Mowgli is awful but nothing exactly ran smoothly. We moved table twice in the first five minutes, once at our request because they'd put us right underneath a very powerful and very cold air conditioning unit, and a second time because they needed to rearrange nearby tables to accommodate a large party of walk-ins. It was handled politely enough, but as pretty much the only table that wasn't numbering 6 and above, we did feel a bit squeezed out.

Food arrives when they decide it should arrive, so the meal began with a tray of lamb chops and chips. They were actually very good - not overcooked, nicely charred from the grill, and a decent thickness. I could have done with a slightly more aggressive spice mix, but other than that there was little to complain about other than the fact lamb & chips would have been better as a main than a starter.

Chat 'bombs' were nice enough - quite thick casings which tends to suggest they were designed to be made quite far in advance, but in fact the ingredients were nice and fresh and they went down pretty well.

Then appeared the most un- butter chicken-like butter chicken I think I've ever come across. Either they'd brought us the wrong dish, or Mowgli's take on the classic really is a dark oniony sauce, with little to no sign of yogurt and with a very subdued tomato element indeed. The best butter chicken is light and smoothly tomatoey, kind of like a posh Heinz cream of tomato soup (I hope I haven't offended too many millions of people with that remark, but it really is) studded with huge chunks of tandoor-grilled chicken. This was a generic high-street curry, flat and unremarkable. Perhaps I'd have been kinder if they'd even attempted something approaching the real thing, but I guess we'll never know.

I don't know whether there's any precent for adding rhubarb to dahl, but whether this is a traditional Indian recipe or something dreamt up by the fusion fans at Mowgli, the rhubarb flavour was (probably mercifully) absent, leaving us with a fairly ordinary bowl of green dahl.

"Tea-steeped chickpeas" came as part of the veggie/vegan "Indian School Tiffin" menu and were solid enough, if a bit watery and thin...

...and the same criticism could be levelled at this potato and tomato affair ("Picnic potato curry"), which was eaten, but not enthusiastically. There's increasingly a financial motivation for restaurants to expand their vegan offering these days, and the task should be easier than most for Indian restaurants with the Hindu culture of vegan cuisine, so it's disappointing when the best a kitchen can come up with is, well, a bowl of boiled potato in a thin tomato sauce.

But I should repeat, nothing at Mowgli was awful. Nothing was undercooked, overcooked, underseasoned or clumsily presented. All the food, in the manner of so many proto-chains, was considered, contained and politely done, neither too experimental nor too basic. It clearly has its fans, judging by the raucous crowd on a Monday night in late December, people who are more than willing to pay slightly over the odds for what is only just decent Indian cooking, perhaps because Indian restaurants are not Liverpool's strong point and perhaps because nice colonial-era décor and smart service are more than what most people need for a nice night out. And good luck to them, why not.

Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately) for me, I have been to Dishoom and Roti Chai and Masala Zone, all living proof that an Indian Subcontinent proto-chain (in fact in the case of Dishoom, actual nationwide chain) is not only not doomed to be inoffensive and blandly crowd-pleasing but every bit as exciting, rewarding and dynamic as the very finest examples of the cuisine can be. I don't mind that Mowgli wants to be a chain - I mind that it really feels like they want to be a chain. And that's not a good look.

Anyway, if you're in Liverpool and you fancy some dahl and puri, I imagine you'll end up here, and you probably won't hate it either. The bill came to £58.40 for 3 with two glasses of wine, which is by no means unreasonable, and even after the relief of escaping that noisy room died down we didn't regret our evening. They are, after all, doing a lot of things right, and these uncertain times a Liverpool food success story, however much it fails to satisfy snobby food bloggers like myself, should be applauded. I just wish I was able to applaud it a bit louder.

6/10

Apollo Banana Leaf, Tooting

Yes, I know I'm late to the game on this one. Whole swathes of curry-loving Tooting residents (I doubt there's any other kind of Tooting resident) will be rolling their eyes at the news that another food blogger has "discovered" the Apollo Banana Leaf, and will be grumbling at the prospect of tables at this tiny little spot on the High Street becoming even more difficult to grab.

But I'm afraid I'm duty bound to spread the word on this restaurant, because it is a rare occasion indeed that you find somewhere serving food of such quality at such bafflingly low prices. I just don't know how they turn a profit. Sure, we're talking cheap ingredients here - mutton, cod, chicken, various South Indian vegetables - but most curry houses charge twice this for commodity vindaloo sauce and a couple of poppadums. Here, everything is rich with lovingly-crafted spicing and careful slow cooking, served with a smile (if not always particularly speedily) and the quiet, unspoken knowledge that they are amongst the very best at what they do.

In true curry house style, we began with fried things. Green banana bhaji and mutton rolls would each have been impressive enough (crispy and perfectly dry-fried - not a hint of grease) had they not been presented with probably the greatest hot sauce I've ever had in my life. Only the fermented salt-chilli "ketchup" from Clove Club comes close, and indeed this was quite similar in taste, expertly balancing salt and vinegar with a powerful chilli hit. Quite brilliant.

Aubergine masala was one of the biggest hits of the night, and one of the few dishes that had no meat or fish in it. Creamy without being bland, and still allowing the fried aubergines to be the main flavour, it was the sort of thing you wish you could eat forever. Done in the same sauce was a just-done fillet of masala cod, possibly the only time in the last couple of years I've had a bit of fish in an Indian restaurant that wasn't overcooked.

But choosing highlights was a difficult job. Seafood string hopper was a sort of South Indian paella, with loads of lovely tender squid nestling amongst crunchy bits. Chicken and Prawn 65 were expertly fried nuggets of shocking purple, crunchy outside and utterly tender within. For a city not exactly short of fried chicken shops, it's surprisingly rare to find anywhere that's found out the secret of doing it properly. It speaks volumes that only the Clove Club's (there's that name again) buttermilk chicken could give this a run for its money.

Only a chicken dosa disappointed slightly, although perhaps this was partly a result of them forgetting a "gravy" that usually appears with this dish according to the regulars I was eating with. But the dosa itself was still tasty, and fortunately there was still a bit of that incredible hot sauce left to dip it in.

Finally, devilled mutton, and further proof of Apollo Banana Leaf's extreme command of spicing and slow-cooking. Comparable in style to the Tayyabs dry meat - and we all know how good that is - shot through with crispy fried curry leaves and onion, each cube of mutton was meltingly tender and generously coated in that thick, dark paste of spicy loveliness. Click on that image above to enlarge, and just look how utterly beautiful it is. And then imagine how good it tastes. Believe me, you're not even close.

Hopefully you'll have made your mind up by this point in the post that Apollo Banana Leaf is a serious restaurant worth anyone's time. But if you're still sitting on the fence, let me give you one final shove. The final bill per head, with everything you see above apart from the wine (ABL is BYO) came to just under £12. Even with the usual 12.5% added on - which they didn't even ask for - it still was only £13. And so, just to thank them for one of the most enjoyable meals we'd had in a very long time, we each happily handed over £15. They deserved it, and so do you. Go as soon as you possibly can.

9/10