London is rife with Indian restaurants, but good ones are few and far between. How far? Try two tubes and a bus ride. But that didn't stop Tim and I from meeting a friend at Chai Pani near Marble Arch last night.
Chai Pani is the only restaurant in London to offer the cuisine of Marwar, a region of Rajasthan in western India. Happiness for me, the Marwari's are vegetarian, and they love their dal.
Their menu is huge, and somewhat uncomprehensible to us western folk: desert berries, bajra khichadi, kadhi, bitter goard. Almost everything is offered wheat-free or vegan, such as millet rotis, buckwheat flour pancakes, lentil dumplings... they even had a besan cheela!
We couldn't decide on any one dish, so we each ordered a thali, a selection of dishes served on a circular metal tray. Our thalis varied, but each featured a starter, subzi (curries), dal, roti (bread), rice, and mithaai (dessert).
My salad of whole wheat berries with tomatoes and a tangy dressing was simple, but satisfying. The soy yogurt raita (I requested a vegan thali) was surprisingly delicious. I eat soygurt on my muesli, but wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it with savory dishes. This raita was inspirational: a liberal dose of salt and spice masked the "soyness" of the yogurt. I ended up eating it with a spoon.
The stand-out dish was the dal: a simple but spicy (woefully small) bowl of heaven. I would have been very happy (and less poor) with a larger bowl of this and and a side of roti; everything else in the thali paled in comparison.
Some of our dishes were quite bizarre indeed. Tim was treated to some "desert berries", black stringy things that looked more like twigs and tasted less like food. For dessert, he received what looked like a bowl of brown sugar, along with some plain jaggery and another bowl of orange-colored sugar. My dessert seemed to be wheat mushed with water and sugar. Sugar sugar sugar. I didn't bother.
Accodring to their website, "Chai Pani" is a term denoting the offering of hospitality to guests in a sub continental home. If that's true, then Chani Pani the restaurant definitely lives up to its name. I'm pretty sure most of our dishes were made to order, and the staff are beyond polite. The owner/chef type lady came out while we were eating and asked how we enjoyed the food and inquired why I ordered a vegan thali (kind of weird, but okay).
So the food was pretty damn good and it was fun trying new things even if they were too weird to finish. The thing is, Chai Pani is crazy expensive for what you get. The bill came to almost £100 for our three thalis and three large beers. You can go to Govinda's in Soho and pay £4.50 for the same amount of food. You won't get beer or table service, but you do get damn good food that doesn't leave you in mourning when it's over. Same goes for Rasa, which is as far as I can tell the best vegetarian Indian restaurant in London.
I guess I need to lighten up and accept that London is really expensive and a $62 USD meal is just life as usual unless you get your meals at KFC or a kebab shop.
