Trishna

Trishna

http://trishnalondon.com

Trishna - London Restaurant Reviews | Hardens

A chef who trained with Vineet Bhattia produces many dishes of very high quality at this Marylebone Indian - an offshoot, not that you'd know to look at it, of a famous establishment in Mumbai; the devotion to portion-control, however, sometimes verges on absurd.

There's much to be said for the earnestness of the US model, but restaurants can drift over time, and it's arguable just how much effort (and money) it really makes sense to put in to appraising a restaurant very definitely at one single point in time (especially if that's just after opening).

We believe that even a set lunch tells you pretty much as much about a restaurant as you'll ever get out of a single visit.

So it was on our visit to this new Marylebone Indian, which is an offshoot of a famous seafood establishment in Mumbai.

The fish main course from the set menu was so small that it could easily have been served in a tapas bar.

Review of London Indian restaurant Trishna by Andy Hayler in ...

Duck chaat was a pleasant starter, with a definite chilli kick (13/20).

Cauliflower samosas came with a carrot, ginger and cauliflower chutney, and although perfectly pleasant, £10 for two very small samosas is hardly a bargain (12/20).

Better was bream marinated with coriander and green chilli before being cooked in the tandoor, served with tomato “kachumber”, a salad of tomato, onion and cucumber.

Potato with curry leaves, ginger and chilli retained the texture of the potato properly (13/20), and a bread selection was fine, my favourite being a potato kulcha.

With bhindi at £8, the bream starter at £14 and the potato side dish at £7 this all mounts up, our bill coming to £101 a head, the food element of the meal coming to £48 a head.

The Ordinary Man's Restaurant Review Series: Trishna London ...

So it is a bit like its namesake in Bombay - a small and crowded Indian restaurant, big on flavors (and noise), but small on space (of course, there is more space in an adjoining room which probably seems less crowded, but we didn't have the pleasure of that opportunity).

Hopes shattered of a meal reminiscent of India, I still hold out hope for a well-cooked and presented meal, because I soon learn of surprise 2, that despite not having an affiliation to my favorite restaurant in Bombay, Trishna in London still carries with it some pedigree and the genetics for good food - it is owned and managed by the same family that owns London's hottest restaurant currently - Gymkhana.

There's Indian food and then there are ingredients you would never see in Indian cuisine (there may be purists out there who would consider these ingredients an affront to the traditional Indian meal) - you have duck seekh kebabs, lasooni scallops, Chettinad rabbit, salmon tikka... and so on.

Probably a mix of it all; with that muddled mindset, we went for the Dorset Brown Crab in a butter, pepper and garlic sauce and the Caldine Jheenga Curry, a traditional prawn curry made with a coconut base and bold south Indian flavors.

Accompanied with the basmati rice, the curry could have been cooked at any one of India's famous south Indian joints - it could have been cooked by a South Indian mom using home ground spices and a recipe passed down through the generations (because we all know moms are the best cooks) - and you would not have known... It was so good, that it more than overcame the disappointment of the crab; it was so good in fact that I mixed the crab into that curry and ate it with rice.

Trishna, 15-17 Blandford Street, London W1 | The Independent

Trishna has a fair claim to call itself the coolest Indian restaurant in London.

Apparently, he spent a year before Trishna opened, wandering through India's south-west region, picking up tips from relations (such as grinding your own spices every day).

Everything is made on the premises, the green sauce is a fresh coriander-mint soup, while the red one's a shrimp and tomato chutney, chewy and delicious.

We chose one starter from the "pakora" section – deep-fried squid, with sliced raw chilli and lime sauce, very toothsome and spiced, but in need of a dipping sauce – and from the "char-grilled" section I ordered twin fillets of bream.

The basmati rice was fluffily perfect, and the successive waves of bread just right – it's a good sign when care is taken with the free accessories.

Grace Dent reviews Trishna | London Evening Standard

ES Food Newsletter The problem with the contemporary Indian restaurant Gymkhana on Albemarle Street — in all its suckling pig vindaloo and tandoori guinea fowl glory — is there are no bloody problems, thus one has to barter one’s first-born in order to secure a table.

And even then one is taking the risk of sitting in a mock colonial dining club jam-packed with restaurant critics, as Gymkhana is the sort of place we indolent puffy-cheeked expense-account whingers lurk, typically strewn in chicken butter masala smears, at 3.30pm on a midweek afternoon, feigning our home-internet connection is kaput and that’s why our column is late.

In the wake of Gymkhana’s success, chef-proprietor Karam Sethi’s other restaurant, the Michelin-starred Trishna on Blandford Street in Marylebone, has been rejigged and redesigned, with new dishes and a revamped wine list.

I visited Trishna a few years ago, just as I took over this column and made it Grace and Flavour, the restaurant dispatch the hospitality world follows avidly, though mainly out of amused bewilderment.

Trishna, 15-17, Blandford St, W1U 3DG, trishnalondon.com Browse Grace Dent's latest restaurant reviews Browse Grace Dent's latest restaurant reviews 1/10 El Pastór 2/10 Radio Alice 3/10 Lingholm Kitchen 4/10 Luca 5/10 Anzu 6/10 Temper Paul Winch-Furness 7/10 Smokestak Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures 8/10 Noble Rot 9/10 Laughing Heart Evening Standard / eyevine 10/10 Park Chinois

Restaurant review: Trishna , London W1 - Telegraph

Trishna, a new Indian restaurant, is a strange space: nicely put together and bacheloresque in sensibility, but the first room feels a bit like a corridor, and the second room feels like the back room.

The squid in spiced rice flour with lime and chilli was something else – crunchy, salty, all the spice and character of street food, with a superb quality of sea creature underpinning it all.

There was a tomato kachumber on the side, which is like a salsa via Bombay – tomato, onion, coriander, lime, ginger, garlic, zingyness, purpose, balance, everything an already lovely piece of fish might need.

We finished off with some fish curry, mild and delicate, with all the classic curry-house additions, only of course with bells on.

But there are lots of Indian flavours in his 24-hour shoulder of lamb with spiced spinach dumplings (£7) Rasa’s neat quayside venue specialises in dishes from Kerala, from mango, green banana and yogurt curry (£7.25) to kappayum meenum – king fish cooked in smoked tamarind and cassava (£9.99) This former excise office has been strikingly transformed by a vast glass extension and now serves upmarket Indian dishes such as mussallam of poussin, pan-roasted and stuffed with nuts, with saffron rice (£17.50)