In many ways, Roti Chai lives
up to the recent hype it’s been receiving. A visit I paid last Saturday as part of a birthday party revealed the food to be very good indeed. My starter, somewhat elusively titled 'Chicken 65,' is best described simply as little nuggets of kick ass spiced fried chicken - to say I really enjoyed it is putting it lightly. Al's Bengali fishcakes got the thumbs up too, and she also approved of the main course, Awadhi lamb quorma (lamb korma to you and me), which I can confirm was spot-on, a
delicately flavoured masterpiece. The use of rosewater and saffron gave the sauce a distinctive fragrance and richness that separated it from bog-standard curry house kormas, though the lamb could perhaps have
been stewed a little longer so that it fell apart more easily. Still, it was good
enough that I managed to forget that the roof of my mouth didn't resemble a Croydon furniture shop in August. That it so say, it was very good indeed. The
eponymous roti selection was stellar,
some of the best bread I’ve had in an Indian restaurant, with the orange and cumin one standing out in particular.
My only real gripe with the place,
therefore, is that £16.80 is a heck of a lot for a bowl of curry. It’s nouveau
Indian prices – a curry at Michelin-starred Tamarind is only a couple of quid
more - but this was not nouveau Indian food. It was, rather refreshingly I
might add, brilliantly executed home-style cooking and contemporary takes on classic subcontinental street food. I was told that the
larger plates we ordered from the ‘Regions’ section of the menu were just about substantial
enough to share between two; that's a distinct possibility, if the two concerned have supermodel-style appetites, though given my stature I wasn't prepared to take the risk. The tag attached to plain steamed rice, £3.50, is more difficult to justify - surely it should have had something a bit unique about it to explain the price? - though a more realistic proposition for sharing.
