Cooling off at the Bombay
The Bombay Bicycle Club is a well-established Wandsworth restaurant that was recently bought by The Clapham House Group with the intention of rolling it out.
Happily for Hampstead, the first restaurant branch (as opposed to takeaways) has been opened there on the site that was originally Keats, Hampstead's first temple to fine dining.
It is an attractive space in one of London's most lovely streets and the decoration of the interconnecting rooms is Indian only in a sort of colour supplement way - wooden floors, a few shawls, antique pots and an old penny-farthing bicycle hung on one wall.
The menu is reassuringly short with a separate list of specials. A starter from that list, dahi sev puri, was liked by my companion, who claims not to be able to sleep at night after Indian food.
It was a mild assembly of spiced potatoes on crisp bread drenched in yogurt and tamarind chutney. Two other good ones were shish kebab murgh and doti prawns.
The murgh (chicken) was served as long slices of breast meat imbued with spicing, with a piquant chutney alongside. The prawns, neither battered not crumbed, were fine, fat specimens served with a green peanut chutney.
The manager suggested barra channa shahi, a slow-cooked lamb shank with chick peas, which is, apparently, one of their well-known dishes. It was good and all the better for being meat in recognisable form.
A bicycle symbol indicates degrees of hotness but even three bicycles (the hottest) was easily manageable in the Calicut fish curry, based on cod in an onion sauce spiked with chillies, curry leaves and tamarind. Daal saag, a vegetarian main course but also a good side dish, had lots of fresh-leaf spinach stirred through yellow split peas. The naan was excellent.
As the evening wore on, the two Eastern European waitresses seemed to lose all interest in their job. A request for fruit for dessert was met with the information that there was only the orange from the bar. This sounded distinctly unappealing so we asked for the bill instead.
Bombay Bicycle Club
3a, Downshire Hill, NW3 1NR
