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.

Paradise, Soho

Though it's sad to a certain degree when any restaurant closes - you have to feel for the staff and management of even the most mediocre high street chain even if you weren't a fan - it's fair to say some losses hit way harder than others. Back in 2019, even before Covid ravaged our shores, Spuntino, the New York-Italian cocktail bar and comfort food joint, closed its doors and overnight I lost a friendly regular pre- and post- dinner spot, somewhere guaranteed to make me happy and where I have loads of great memories. Their truffled egg toast, egg & anchovy soldiers and negronis will live long in legend. RIP.

But! What have we here? In the revamped Spuntino site - think more cosy booths and a much smaller central bar - is Paradise, still achingly hip and staffed by capable friendly people (and still doing great cocktails) but the cuisine on offer is now, in their words, "contemporary Sri-Lankan". "Contemporary", inevitably, translates as "smaller portions and higher prices" but look, this is Soho, not Tooting High Street, and with food this vibrant and exciting it still seems like value to me.

Three half-langoustine for example, for £8, is pretty much what you'd pay at Kiln, who have done for "contemporary" Thai what Paradise are doing for Sri Lankan. Here they came served in a remarkably punchy Ceylonese dressing and a lovely smooth, sweet mango dip. The papaya and palm heart salad on the side was crunchy and fresh, and a welcome balm from the fire of the langoustine dressing.

Everything arrived in one go, normally not much of a problem but I do wish they'd brought out these mangalitza skewers a bit earlier as they were rather cold. That aside, they tasted great, containing a perfect balance of flesh and fat, and soaked in a deep, rich tamarind sauce. Oh, and sorry about the photos. It was very dark in there and my camera is still rubbish.

Normally I wouldn't bother mentioning a side of boiled rice but there was something extra about this muthu samba stuff, incredibly light and soft, the grains being smally and fluffy and round. 'Muthu' apparently translates to 'pearl', which makes sense.

Aubergine and jaggery moju was a generous pile of sticky-spiced veg with a mild chilli kick - milder than the langoustine at least - and with a interesting variety of ingredients and textures. I particularly liked the chew on the large green chilli, which had been blackened over coals I think.

Not pictured is a bowl of huge devilled prawns, their sauce a happy marriage of chilli, tomato, spices and who knows what else, the kind of thing it probably takes a long time and a lot of experience to perfect. Interestingly, we were instructed to try eating these whole, as in shell-on and with heads, but we soon decided that wasn't going to work. Deep-fried shrimps perhaps you can gulp down whole, but not the thick, chewy carapaces of giant prawns. So instead we tore the shells off with our bare hands and had to go to the bathroom to wash ourselves clean before carrying on with the meal.

Finally, egg hopper with an asparagus and tomato sambol. Bringing a much-needed dairy cleanness to a meal that had been otherwise quite spice-heavy and dense, this had a perfectly timed gooey yolk and the sambol was nice and fresh.

So, RIP Spuntino, long live Paradise I say. It is faintly terrifying how easily London restaurants - even the very good ones - can fail, and though I'm sure I don't know the whole backstory on the Troubled Polpo Group (as it is seemingly compulsarily referred to in the press) I do know I still miss Spuntino like I miss anywhere that's been such an integral part of the London food scene for so long. But I also know that I love Paradise, and even if it doesn't become a new regular haunt I'll know that the legacy of Spuntino - cool, exciting, unique - lives on in its new South Asian cousin.

8/10

Vijaya Krishna, Tooting

Over the last few weeks, eater.com have been running a series of 'best value' guides to different areas of London. Exhaustively researched and containing all sorts of insights into the history of various different ethnic cuisines in London, it made me realise two things - one, that despite the best efforts of Brexit and national populism to ruin it all, I still live in the most dynamic and varied food city in the world, and two, that I've explored a shamefully tiny percentage of it.

Such ignorance is nobody's fault but my own, and I would hope that even when making embarrassing errors in posts about modern British, Italian or Spanish restaurants, cuisines that just through sheer weight of exposure I'm relatively familiar with, there's enough elsewhere to enjoy. But when it comes to many minority cuisines, and Sri Lankan/South Indian food in particular, my entire database of past experience consists of a couple of (admittedly excellent) meals at Apollo Banana Leaf and the lunchtime special at Hoppers, and so in critiquing a Sri Lankan restaurant's output, I'm well out of my comfort zone.

Of course this lack of experience would be a bit of an issue even if I loved a particular place - I didn't know what the hell was going on with most of what I was served at ABL, but I knew I liked it - but when a meal falls short, I'm on very shaky ground indeed. Is it even fair to criticise dishes based on sheer personal preference alone, without any way of referencing how they "should" have been served? What if a Sri Lankan restaurant blogger went to Rambla and marked down their (perfect, in this blogger's opinion) gazpacho because it came served cold? Maybe they would have preferred it hot; maybe it even would have been better hot (however unlikely that seems); but does knowing that traditionally gazpacho is served cold a precursor to qualified criticism? Or does anything go in restaurant reviewing on the internet?

Anyway, all the above is permission to take anything that follows in the totally subjective and largely uninformed manner in which it was written, and that however unimpressed I was with Vijaya Krishna, there's every chance if you went you'd have a great time. A maxim which applies to all the posts on this blog, come to think of it.

Cashew nut 'pakoda' were nice enough but I wouldn't really call them a 'starter', more of a bar snack. Half the portion size, and half the price, they'd be worth nibbling on while perusing the menu but I didn't detect any of the advertised curry leaves, chilli or ginger - and I don't think I'd order them again.

'Puri' must mean a very different thing in some parts of South Asia than others because I was expecting little golfball sized spheres of pastry containing chickpeas and tamarind water to pour into them. Instead, this arrived - a kind of wholewheat bread sandwich containing a small amount of decent, if hardly earth-shattering, prawn curry. I didn't hate it, but I just really like the other kind of puri, so I couldn't help being a bit disappointed. Which is hardly their fault, but still.

I very often order butter chicken to assess the skills of a South Asian kitchen because a) I love the stuff, and b) I've had so many over the years I can generally use it as a control variable. Vijaya's was fine, but the bits of chicken were a little dry, and the sauce just didn't have the depth of flavour of other versions. If you're interested, the absolute pinnacle of the butter chicken craft is served by Jamavar in Mayfair - hardly the same budget I know, but worth splurging on if you want to know exactly how good this ostensibly simple dish can get.

We were advised to order the Cochin prawn curry as a house speciality, but I can't say it deserved the title of a signature dish. Prawns were nice and plump and moist, and there were plenty of them, but the sauce was fairly generic and about 5 minutes after we'd eaten it I'd pretty much forgotten it ever existed.

Chicken '65 had a great flavour - much like Apollo Banana Leaf's - but were cut a little small and were dry and stringy, which APL's never are. Much like what had come before, it wasn't awful, not inedible, just dull and a little careless. Plus, not a huge portion for £7.90, it has to be said.

Fortunately, we were able to end on a high, because Vijaya Krishna's paratha is absolutely glorious. An utterly addictive texture, with folds of delicate crispness enveloping silky soft pastry, it was also buttery and rich enough to satisfy on every level. A very very impressive bit of work, and really the only thing approaching a must-order.

But you know what, no harm done. Eater.com haven't got round to South London in their cheap eats guides just yet, so I'm very interested to see which of the Tooting stalwarts make the list. I've heard very good things about an Afghanistani grill house called Namak Mandi, and I do hope that Apollo Banana Leaf gets a mention, but if this meal has taught me anything is that even the most-recommended restaurants need the right audience, and perhaps the joy of these lists is merely to introduce people to new places and let them decide for themselves if they work for them. I probably won't go back to Vijaya Krishna, not with so many other options in the area, but I definitely am glad I've been. And sometimes, that'll do.

6/10

Hoppers, Soho

The Sethi family's first restaurant in London was Trishna, in Marylebone. It's a great restaurant, Indian fine dining that isn't just about serving the same old curry house classics with while tablecloths and a wine list, but reinventing the cuisine from the ground up with superb ingredients, luxurious spicing and a staggering attention to detail. It's still one of my favourite places to eat out, and in fact I've got a big table booked for my birthday next month.

Next, along with Sandia Chang and James Knappett they opened Bubbledogs, a hot dogs and grower champagne concept that seems like a ludicrous idea before you're sat there eating great hot dogs and drinking grower champagne and then it all makes sense. It's still hugely popular. And soon after the Kitchen Table opened out back, 19 seats arranged around an open kitchen serving a seasonal tasting menu which won a Michelin star last year.

Then came Gymkhana in Mayfair, which was greeted like the second coming by London's critics and bloggers (myself included). And quite rightly too, because it's utterly brilliant. That, too, won a Michelin star. Then came Lyle's, where head chef James Lowe serves his St. John-inspired menu of modern British food, full of personality and punch and in one of London's lovelier dining rooms. And you'll know about Bao, their next project, which introduced London to the wonders of Taiwanese buns and still has them queuing down Lexington Street all day every day. Because it is also brilliant.

The latest project from the Sethis is Hoppers, and it's rubbish. Only joking, it's brilliant, just like all the others, and not just brilliant but unique and stylish and innovative and all the other hallmarks of a venture from the family with the Midas touch. The theme this time is Sri Lankan, a cuisine Londoners may have come across in certain spots in Tooting (Jaffna House is good) but is still fairly unknown to most people. Hoppers does it so well that it makes you wonder why nobody has tried to do this kind of thing to Sri Lankan food before, but then that's the genius of the Sethis, to reinvent a cuisine for modern audiences, keeping the traditional core flavours and techniques but creating something genuinely new and exciting.

Every corner of the menu is a surprise and a delight. "Cashew, cassava & ash plantain fry" is nuts and crisped vegetables dusted with a disastrously addictive powerful chilli powder, with a separate chilli sauce for dipping. The heat has you gasping but the flavour has you coming back for more.

Bonemarrow "Varuval" came with a special tool for scraping out the tender marrow from the cute little bones, in a sauce so complex and richly enjoyable it would have been a reason to visit by itself. To soak it up, a fresh roti, flaky and buttery like a savoury croissant, which of course we fought over before ordering another one (at a pathetic £1.25 each, I suggest you do the same). And a little bowl of chicken heart "chukka" had more dense, powerful spicing to compliment the gloriously tender chunks of offal.

There's nothing about "hot butter devilled shrimps" that doesn't scream "eat me", and this was another stunning dish, huge bouncy prawns wrapped in a silky sauce spiked with chilli, curry leaves and pickled green peppercorn.

And still the best was yet to come. The house signature dish is of course the hopper, a bowl-shaped dosa-type pancake thing which for an extra 50p comes with a soft-yolked egg baked into it. With this we chose the guinea fowl "kari" (Tamil for "curry"), beautifully moist and tender drumsticks in another knockout sauce that I'd walk through fire to eat again.

Better even than that though was the black pork kari, chunks of pork so tender they almost dissolve in the mouth, in a thick, sticky sauce that brought to mind the Tayyabs' "dry meat". It's hard to imagine there's a better way of spending £5.50 in London right now; this was a world class curry, almost impossibly good.

It's impossible, too, to overstate just how much of an achievement Hoppers is for everyone involved. As an introduction to Sri Lankan cuisine, it could very easily kickstart a city-wide obsession to rival the burger or BBQ craze. As the latest jewel in the crown of the Sethi empire it proves that these extraordinary people, far from running out of ideas six restaurants in are actually becoming bolder and more innovative, and have another well-deserved hit on their hands.

But more important than all that, Hoppers is just a fantastic place to sit and have your dinner. A beautiful room staffed by people whose genuine enthusiasm for their product shows with every interaction, and a menu so comprehensively enticing it makes you want to order and eat everything on it again and again and again. Nothing about my meal there could be faulted, and so all I can do is award it full marks, and urge you to go and try it yourself as soon as you possibly can. The only remaining question is, what even more wonderful thing could the Sethis possibly come up with next?

10/10

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