Hoppers Soho

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We’re giving Pancake Day a Sri Lankan twist this year – Join us on Tuesday 13th February, where we will be serving a Jaggery Milk Hopper at both Soho and St. Christopher’s place, for one day only.

This unique dessert is created with our Hopper recipe, garnished with Jaggery & Coconut Cream and is a great alternative to your traditional pancake.

If you can’t make it into Hoppers on the day, make sure to download our Jaggery Milk Hopper recipe and try it out for yourself at home.

http://www.hopperslondon.com

Hoppers, restaurant review: 'Love at first taste as I'm transported to ...

I only have to flick through my photo album… That early morning train journey rattling through tea plantations, punctuated by hot, sweet chai and egg hoppers.

The menu comes with a charming glossary of Tamil food, which both informs and makes the mouth water: "Gotu kola sambol is pennywort relish with coconut, Maldive fish and onions."

A wafer-thin "bowl" of pancake, with a just-set fried egg within, generously strewn with pepper, is picture-perfect; the sweet onion relish, that coconut and fish medley in sambol form, and an eye-poppingly fresh coriander chutney.

We've added a fish kari for £5.50 and the white fish in another russet curry tastes of long, slow cooking by a true expert in Tamil cuisine.

Hoppers is not London's, or the UK's, only Sri Lankan restaurant, of course.

Hoppers review – the Sri Lankan verdict on Soho's new Sri Lankan ...

In the words of the Happy Buddha, my Sri Lankan dining companion, Hoppers is a ‘great, enjoyable experience’.

The duck roti saw the flatbread filled with an anonymous minced meat, but this dish was still enjoyable thanks to the thin, mildly nutty and modestly spicy dipping sauce on the side.

While the Happy Buddha wasn’t quite as enamoured with the lamb kothu roti as he was with the black pork curry, that didn’t stop him from hoarding large spoonfuls of the stuff.

Happy Buddha was especially impressed with the milk hopper with treacle, jaggery and durian ice cream which was just as good as it was before.

What to order: Lamb kothu roti; Biryani; Hoppers, dosas and string hoppers; Pork curry; Brinjal moju; Almost all the desserts Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service: £30-35 approx.

Hoppers | Soho, Fitzrovia, Covent Garden | Restaurant Reviews ...

Coming from the Sethi siblings, best known for Gymkhana but also behind Bao, Lyle's and more, this is inspired by roadside shacks (boutiques) of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

These shacks focus on hoppers and dosas which is with Hoppers.

Hoppers: A seductive, come-hither menu | London Evening Standard

The word “hoppers” to describe the pancakes made from fermented rice and coconut milk batter that are popular in southern India and Sri Lanka allegedly came about due to the way the British in the sub-continent pronounced the Tamil word “appam”.

In this moment in London catering of favoured ingredients being translated into restaurant concepts, hoppers were surely hovering out there — but it is the Sethi family who realise it.

Now, with a rattan ceiling, prettily tiled tables, trailing pot plants, demon masks and Sri Lankan posters we have almost nothing like a Tamil roadside shack where you might find the “short eats” that comprise the first part of Hoppers’ notably encyclopaedic menu.

Hot butter devilled shrimps, chicken heart chukka and a vegetarian trio of cashew, cassava and ash plantain fry are other delectable ways tried of running up to — indeed, combining with — hoppers and dosas (crisp flat pancakes made with fermented rice and black lentils).

The attention to detail and delight carries over into the drinks list, where arrack and genever — the origin of Dutch courage — are among the spirits and tropical black pepper cream soda, coconut water and curry leaf buttermilk are some of the soft drinks.

Hoppers: restaurant review | Life and style | The Guardian

Last year they opened another no-reservation restaurant on Soho’s Frith Street called Hoppers, serving the food of Sri Lanka and named after the country’s lacy fermented rice and coconut milk pancakes shaped like a bowl.

No-reservation restaurants are fine when, as here, the place is surrounded by good bars and cafés and they use a text system to call you to your table from nearby.

The menu, which also includes a glossary, is divided between short eats (a phrase which made me flinch slightly; I might want to take my time), hoppers and dosas, karis – the Tamil term for curry – and bigger dishes which we didn’t even make it to.

Bone marrow varuval with roti brings two thick logs of sawn-off roasted bone in a sauce flavoured with coconut, alongside a fragile and buttery roti, the batter having been put on the hot plate in a spiral, so you don’t know whether to eat it or hang it as a decoration.

Tom Kemble’s brilliant restaurant at the auctionhouse Bonhams, on London’s Bond Street, is to open three nights a week from 1 March instead of just one.

Hoppers | Restaurants in Soho, London

Having found out that I was half Sri Lankan (upon which he immediately high-fived me, causing the car to lurch thrillingly to one side), my Colombo-born taxi driver was now trying to solve my personal problems, namely how long it had been since I’d last had a decent hopper.

So attempting to order them in a traditional Sri Lankan restaurant at the ‘wrong time’ is typically met by a baffled expression.

The menu, likewise, gives traditional Sri Lankan street food a fashionable lift.

String hoppers (steamed rice noodle ‘pancakes’) came with not just a classic mild coconut pouring curry but with a terrific fresh coconut sambol.

To finish, watalapam (spiced ‘set’ coconut custard) was exceptional, even if the slice was the smallest I’ve ever seen.