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FOOD & DRINK
The Cinnamon Club’s Vivek Singh with Boisdale Life editor Bill Knott at Boisdale of Belgravia
THE TWO BOTTLE
LUNCH:VIVEK SINGH
By Bill Knott
For the last 30 years, former chef Bill
Knott, the Editor of Boisdale Life, has
written about food, drink and travel
for a host of publications worldwide,
including the Daily Telegraph,
Bloomberg and the Financial Times. He
never skips lunch.
2026 will mark the 25th anniversary
of one of London’s most remarkable
restaurants, even by the standards of
a city in which dining out has become
second nature.
The Cinnamon Club, which opened in
2001 on the site of the Grade II-listed
Westminster Library, was not so much
evolution as revolution. The cofounders, journalist and businessman
Iqbal Wahhab and chef Vivek Singh,
were determined to shatter any
preconceptions of Indian food, both
from Westerners and from Indians.
Vivek recalls their opening menu. “No
pints of lager, and no curries. We were
a poppadom-free zone. We wanted
to focus our diners’ minds by taking
things away.” Indeed, other than a
pleasant waft of spice in the air, there
was little sign that the handsome,
high-ceilinged dining room, many of
the library’s bookshelves still intact,
was home to an Indian restaurant.
2001 was a watershed. As well as
the opening of The Cinnamon Club,
Michelin handed out stars to two
restaurants, Atul Kochhar’s Tamarind
and Vineet Bhatia’s Zaika, and Indian
restaurants had 昀椀nally achieved
gastronomic respectability.
The tables were as smartly dressed as
the (mostly Western) waiters; the wine
list would have graced any Michelinstarred French restaurant; the produce
had impeccable provenance; and
Vivek’s plating was accomplished
with a painterly eye for beauty and
detail. You would scour the room in
vain for a prawn vindaloo or an onion
bhaji.
But Vivek still remembers the struggle
he had to convince his customers.
“Western diners, whose idea of Indian
food was based on their local curry
house, thought it was too expensive
and the portions were too small.
Indians would say that their mothers
cooked their favourite Indian food,
and asked us why we were trying so
hard.
Now that London has Indian options
at all levels, from street food and
breakfasts (Dishoom’s all-conquering
bacon naan roll springs to mind)
to high-end restaurants (Amaya,
Gymkhana and many others), it
is dif昀椀cult to remember just how
polarised the Indian dining scene used
to be.
“No challenge was greater than the
idea that Indian cuisine should be
inexpensive. But we were using topnotch ingredients – our seafood came
from the same 昀椀shmonger as Gordon
Ramsay, for instance – and we were
paying our staff properly. You can’t do
that on a curry house budget.”
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