Packing A Punch with Flavour at Soho Wala
English tea with cupcakes delicately arranged on stands, shots of vodka with tamarind, Cobra beer and biryani.
We discovered this schizophrenic mix of tastes in what used to be Marlborough Street Magistrates Court where the good, bad and ugly from Oscar Wilde to the Rolling Stones stood in the dock to face the full force of the law. There’s still a cell in the basement to enhance the ambience.
This is a listed building between the posh West End emporium Liberty and the Palladium Theatre, now transformed into the five star Courthouse House Hotel. And on the ground floor they’ve squeezed a new Indian street food restaurant called Soho-Wala.
It’s more a corridor than a fully fledged room, with a Rudyard Kipling Jungle Book feel thanks to the wallpaper. Decor is grey and modern rather than those red flock wall coverings of old.
We’d come for food rather than decor, and that did not disappoint. Delicious Indian street food boasted flavours so delicate the chef is clearly highly skilled at blending spices. He managed the perfect mix with just the right amount of chilli heat to bring alive minced lamb, Stone bass, broccoli and cauliflower.
We started with truffle phulwadi. Described as a snack with truffle the Quavers-textured crisps came in colours so alarmingly vivid they must have been enhanced with something not entirely natural. More to my taste was the Panipur wala, crispy wheat shells resting on shot glasses of tamarind flavoured water. For a £1 extra – worth every penny in my book – they infuse the water with vodka. It packs a punch. And a half.
Back to the Cobra Indian lager to accompany a couple of dishes from the clay oven: Malai wali broccoli and achar wali gobi (chargrilled marscapone spiced infused broccoli and pickled marinated cauliflower); and Samudri machli (Yuzi infused stone bass with chilli paste). Yuzi, for the uninitiated like us, is a citrus fruit which adds a distinctive zing.
Our one meat dish was Gilafi kebab (lamb mince, mint, coriander and home-made garam masala with marsala chips). The chips were a masterpiece, the lamb tasty but encased in a less exciting chewy wrap.
Desserts were enticing: Mango phirni (mango puree and rice, pistachios) and Vidhesi chai (Assam tea brule, shortbread,vanilla icecream and malai crème) were both superb.
Our dishes – lots of veggie and Vegan options – were hot and spicy. But not that hot. So why did two handsome hi-vis firefighters turn up and head for the Moroccan-tiled bar? Not to order a cooling Cobra. Or douse a diner who’d overdosed on chilli. There seemed to be some drain problems outside in Great Marlborough Street that required their attention. Maybe too much ghee had caused a blockage.
But our food, with friendly service, was light, flavoursome and not guilty of any crime against culinary law.
- SOHO-WALA 19 – 21 Great Marlborough St, Soho, London W1F 7HL Phone: 020 7297 5555
