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

Tapas Room, Broadway Market Tooting

I've never been short of reasons to visit Tooting; it is, after all, home of my beloved Apollo Banana Leaf, one of London's best (and best value) Sri Lankan restaurants; to Spice Village, the Tayyabs of the South, serving a fantastic menu of authentic Punjabi dishes; and a whole host of other interesting South Indian and Sri Lankan joints all up and down Tooting Road. It's a genuine food destination, and the fact it's only 20 minutes on the 219 bus from my house is, for someone otherwise stuck with the less-than-inspiring selection of restaurants on Lavender Hill (Mien Tay excepted), a real godsend.

But now, Tooting has "gone all Brixton" and the indoor Broadway Market (not to be confused with its namesake in Hackney, or indeed Tooting Market which is also something different) these days plays host to the kind of eclectic group of music stores, bottle shops and counter restaurants that will be very familiar to anyone who's ever wandered through Market Row SW9.

One of the newest arrivals in Broadway is the Tapas Room, a little side project from the Donostia Social Club gang and so already bearing quite a good pedigree. The menu is short - only 3 hot dishes, the rest of it mainly cheese and charcuterie - and simple; there's no leg of jamón ibérico de bellota being carved, for example (there's no room, for a start), and no fancy cuts of presa or secreta seared in a charcoal-fired Josper grill. It's closer, in fact, to the kind of stripped-back tapas bar you might find on the streets of Spain than the big-name flagship London-Spanish restaurants such as José or Barrafina.

And yet, in simplicity there is often great beauty. Pan con tomate is basically the Tapas Room in a single dish - bright and cheery, straightforwardly enjoyable but also clearly with a good knowledge of Spanish food having gone into it, it was the best I've tried since Barrafina, and as anyone who's ever tried that will tell you, that's a hell of a compliment. Everything was right about this - excellent quality tomatoes seasoned with big crystals of sea salt, a faint burn of garlic and - most importantly - lightly toasted ciabatta that's not too chewy. A pan con tomate masterclass.

Chicken liver parfait was also a fine example, with a good smooth, light texture and good rich flavour. It came with a pickled fig - presumably pickled in-house though don't quote me on that - which played the part of the chutney which would usually arrive with a chicken liver parfait.

If I was to criticise any aspect of this combined cheese and charcuterie platter - and I will, because that's why you're here - it would be to say that I do not like to see the cheeses touching each other on a board. Cheese is not like ice cream; you shouldn't be eating any more than one kind in one mouthful, and cross-contamination (especially with stronger cheeses) sullies the experience. That said, they were all good cheeses (Picos blue, a washed-rind manchego and a really lovely soft goats whose name I really should have made a note of), served at the correct temperature and so they just about got away with being stacked up like Jenga blocks. And the sausages were all great - a Catalonian fuet, an Iberico salsichon and Basque chorizo which all packed a huge flavour.

At the risk of repeating myself, both hot dishes were also, well, great. First white asparagus, gently charred on the grill and dressed in a romesco/pesto-style combo with a few toasted almonds on top, it was a perfect showcase for this seasonal delicacy.

And then, best-till-last, a giant slab of soft morcilla, toasted to crunchy on the edges but soft and fluffy inside, with a couple of fried quail's eggs on top like big cartoon eyes. Like everything that had come before, it was expertly constructed and confidently presented, unfussy but eminently enjoyable.

With so many fantastic Spanish restaurants in London at the moment, it's very easy, despite our best intentions, to get a bit blasé when yet another lovely little spot appears serving cheese and charcuterie and fried morcilla with quail's eggs. So it's important to never make the mistake of thinking running a place like this is easy - we just happen to have a huge number of very talented people here at the moment, who are serving some of the best Spanish food outside of Spain (and, let's face it, inside of Spain as well) for a price (under £20 a head for the food above) that only the most miserly would grumble at. Yes, there are fancier, more expensive and more elaborate places to eat Spanish food, but this is a cuisine defined by its sheer variety. Surely there's Tapas Room for everyone?

8/10

We were invited to Tapas Room and didn't pay.

Chicken Shop, Tooting

Already home to London’s most enviable collection of South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurants (you can’t go far wrong with any of them but Apollo Banana Leaf and Jaffna House are my pick of the bunch), the arrival of Chicken Shop on the High Street is yet another reason to travel to Tooting for dinner. The first branch, up in Kentish Town, has had them queuing down the street at times, although given the competition in that area perhaps that’s not surprising. More unclear is how the concept will go down in a part of London not exactly crying out for more dining options.

Anyway, here it is, and very decent it is too. This isn’t going to be a huge post - there’s only so much you can write about a restaurant with one menu item - but then Chicken Shop isn’t a place that really needs all that much publicity anyway; nearly every table was taken on an opening weekday evening at 6:30pm. Five of us sat at the bar - the only space left - and ordered “two chickens and all the sides twice”.

Not pictured is a nice enough coleslaw and an actually very nice indeed lettuce and avocado salad which was dressed and seasoned faultlessly. Apologies for the lack of photos but it was pretty dark in there and anyway, I’m sure you can imagine what coleslaw and a green salad look like.

The main event is, of course, the chicken and for just £14.50 for an entire bird I can forgive them it tasting slightly low-rent, and even for overcooking it in parts. It was, in the end, a very acceptable bit of bird, with some good charring from the rotisserie, and we all enjoyed it, even more when coated in one of the two house hot sauces. They were so good in fact that I would have happily paid for a jar to take home if they were for sale.

So, helped along by efficient service, some crinkle-cut chips and a couple of jugs of house red, a good time was had by all. There’s nothing to swoon over at Chicken Shop - it’s a solid, friendly place doing one thing and doing it well enough - but even so, in a city where plenty of people manage to get chicken so horribly wrong, even this modest achievement is to be admired. And for a bill of £15 a head, there’s really not much you can moan about. So I won’t.

7/10

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

Jaffna House, Tooting

There's nothing quite so precious to a jaded food blogger with a run of far too many mediocre meals under his belt than a recommendation from a clued-up local. Technically, I should also consider Tooting my neighbourhood - it's only really the other side of Wandsworth Common from Battersea and is barely 5 minutes in the car - but in that curious way that seems to affect any journey across London suburbs, while I can get from my house into Soho in about half an hour, travelling from Clapham Junction to Tooting Broadway last night took me the best part of an hour and a half, taking in such delights as Clapham South station and the service roads around St George's Hospital. I arrived cold and very, very hungry.



I am going to get the negative aspects of Jaffna House out of the way before I go any further, because it's probably important to put their excellent food in some perspective. First of all, the service is a bit ropey. Three times I had to ask for my first drink, and four for my second. Courses arrived at a completely random rate and completely disassociated from their accompanying pickles and sauces, and this on an evening where no more than 3 of the tables (in an admittedly small room) were occupied at one time - God knows how they'd cope if the place was full. Also, while some people may find the experience of eating in someone's front room quaint or authentic, I imagine it won't be for everyone, and having to get several people to shift out of their seats every time you got up for the loo was slightly embarrassing.

So now that's out of the way, let me tell you that the food I had last night at Jaffna House was as vibrant, unique and exciting as I've had in many long months. It was so unusual, in fact, that in most cases I'm going to struggle to remember the names of the dishes we ordered or guess what went into them, but I imagine readers of this blog are used to that by now. We started rather prosaically with some poppadums and an excellent (and very fiery) red mixed pickle.


"That is a dessert." The waiter said as we attempted to order two balls of deep-fried lentils called Soosiam.
"Then why is it on the starter menu?"
"Some people like to order them as a starter."
"Well, then, so will we."
Very nice they were, too, and there was actually something rather addictive about the mixture of sugar, coconut and lentil when eaten with the fiery house pickles.


This bowl of Devilled Squid was a revelation. The mixture of complex dry spicing and an aggressive chilli heat had us all reaching for our drinks, but the pain was worth it - the squid was incredibly moist, the vegetables fresh and crispy, and the overall mix of textures very satisfying. It disappeared in a matter of moments. Jaffna House have a whole section on their menu of Devilled Dishes, and I want to work my happy, sweaty way through all of them.


Something called an oothappam was a kind of savoury vegetable pancake, studded with peas and chilli and all sorts. A great fluffy dough made the difference between this being a stodgy filler and something worth ordering in its own right, and again, was livened up even more once covered in mixed pickle.


Finally, a dish I recognised - a masala dosa, as crispy and subtly vinegary as you could want, with a nice rich potato filling. Every bit as good as the offering from Kastoori just up the road, and cheaper too. At around this time, my drink, listed as "sherbet" on the menu, arrived. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but a glass of Pepto Bismol was definitely not on the shortlist. Still, it was pleasant and sweet enough and, let's be honest, even if it actually was Pepto Bismol it would still make sense after those Devilled Squids.



Mains were equally interesting. Tomato kulambu had a fantastic tomato taste and was expertly slow cooked with a mixture of spices that I won't even begin to guess. Seafood pittu and mutton kotthu allowed their respective main ingredients to sing whilst still containing a punchy, crunchy amount of green chilli. And best of all was an incredible slow-cooked aubergine dish, which unlike many Sichuan offerings actually tasted mainly of aubergine - deep, rich, concentrated aubergine in a thick, dark paste that was like oily vegetable heroin.


Given the quality of the oothappam and the dosa, I shouldn't have been surprised that the house breads - a hilariously inflated, glee-slicked naan and some splendid roti - were also excellent, but it is extraordinary just how well this one restaurant can pull off such different styles with such success. The naan, in particular, was perfectly seasoned, with a crispy base and pillowy dough and brought utter joy with every bite. How many multi Michelin starred French restaurants can cook bread of this quality, consistently, and to order for every customer?


The bill came to £50 for four people. They don't add on service by default, and given the issues in this department I wonder how many people ever add it on themselves, but really, having to ask a few extra times for my Pepto Bismol and having to re-arrange the table to cope with a flurry of arriving dishes was a small price to pay for food of such unique and stunning quality, and at such a low price. As a food blogger, you live for the moments like this - random delightful discoveries in difficult-to-reach corners of the city - and it's only out of a misplaced sense of duty that I'm sharing Jaffna House with you now. Because otherwise, much like the lucky residents of Tooting, I would be quite happy keeping the place all to myself.

8/10