A 25th Anniversary Celebration Menu – It’s hard to believe that it’s a quarter of a century since Vivek Singh opened his first Cinnamon restaurant.
Tempus fugit as the Romans used to say, and when I heard that there is a special 25th anniversary celebration menu at £25 for three courses, I thought I should check it out.
The menu is made up of some of the favourite dishes and ingredients from the early days and it’s more than a seasonal offering: it’s a nod to the dishes, flavours and ideas that shaped the restaurant’s early years, but reimagined to make it more contemporary.
I trotted along the other evening with my friend Sidrah (I often think it’s useful to get the perspective from an Indian point of view as well as my own). It was a Wednesday evening, and the restaurant was pretty busy – good to see in these times when the Government seems to be intent on killing off our hospitality industry.
We enjoyed a cocktail while perusing the special menu. There was a choice of three starters:
Railway style vegetable cake with beetroot and raisin, kasundi ketchup; Grilled sardine fillets with chilli and garlic, spiced rava crumble or Sandalwood flavoured tandoori chicken breast coriander chutney.
Sidrah opted for the vegetable cake, and not quite fancying sardines, I chose the chicken breast. Interestingly, Sidrah commented that sardines aren’t a very Indian fish but I’m sure they will have been given the Vivek Singh magic touch.
Sidrah felt that, even for an Indian palate, the vegetable cake was spicy, but she enjoyed it. My portion of the chicken was very generous, with a whole breast (not pieces as I had expected) and a delicious coriander chutney that paired beautifully with it.
For our mains, with Sidrah not being a big meat eater, she chose Stir-fried aubergine in sesame tamarind sauce with coconut rice. This comprised three baby aubergines, that were cooked so that they were lovely and soft but still held their shape. The tamarind sauce was beautifully tangy. The accompanying coconut rice was a perfect pairing – it was a triumph,
Smoked Kentish lamb cannon pickling sauce, keema palak, pilau rice appealed to me (note though, that there is a £10 supplement). It was rather well done for my taste, but Sidrah tells me that this is normal for lamb in India. The smoked element was very subtle and the keema palak was the spiciest part of the dish. It came with pilau rice, but to be honest the lamb portion was so generous I hardly ate much of the rice, but it was very good.
Not that we needed a dessert, the included options sounded too good to pass up: Alphonso mango and cardamom brûlée with carom seed crisp or Carrot and ginger toffee pudding with cinnamon ice cream. We opted to share a portion of each and the brûlée was so delicious we wished we’d chosen two portions of that. The other pudding had a rather strange, chewy texture and luckily wasn’t too sweet for a toffee pud, and the ice cream wasn’t cinnamon, but banana – although it tasted good.
This special menu is definitely worth trying, especially if you haven’t yet been to Cinnamon Bazaar.
Another Special Menu
But there’s another special menu on the horizon: Following a sell-out run at The Cinnamon Club this January, the much-loved Retro Menu is back and this time it’s going on tour. For a limited period, this spring and summer, the menu will travel across select Cinnamon Collection restaurants in London, before returning to The Cinnamon Club for a final encore. Created by Executive Chef Vivek Singh to mark 25 years of pioneering modern Indian dining, the menu revisits dishes from the restaurant’s original 2001 opening, with plates starting from just £5. Available for lunch and dinner, it offers a rare opportunity to experience the bold, pioneering dishes that helped redefine modern Indian dining in the capital, all at their original prices. It will be at Cinnamon Bazaar Richmond from 26th May – 7th June so the perfect time to check out either of these special nostalgic menus while we enjoy this unusually warm weather.
Executive Chef Vivek Singh comments: “When we created the Retro Menu at The Cinnamon Club, the response from guests was incredible. Many of these dishes hold a special place in our story, and taking the menu on tour felt like the perfect way to share that experience with the wider Cinnamon community across London.”
The Seasoned Gastronome