Little Kolkata: The Cult Favourite Supperclub Gets A Permanent Home
A lot of people are going to be happy about Little Kolkata taking the leap from sell-out supperclub to actual restaurant.
Their Kilburn dinners were routinely booked up in advance, punters snapping up tickets faster than you can say Doi Papri Chaat. Maybe some of those supperclub regulars are responsible for the nice buzz at their new Covent Garden location. It's busy on a weekday evening, enough curries and chaats being served up to turn the small dining room fragrant with coconutty, tamarind-bright smells.
Star dish might be the doi papri chaat — wafers topped with potatoes topped with a yoghurt and tamarind sauce — something deeply savoury, smothered in something intensely sweet and tangy. Their luchi — a Bengali puffy bread — proves that something can be deep-fried and cloud-light at the same time. And the gariahater ghugni chaat is a warming, hefty heap of lentils, onions, chilli and minced lamb that punches above its £7 price-tag, and would be a solid reason to stop by for a winter's lunch here.
The pricing is a bit confusing, hinting at starter-sizes and main courses, but possibly more dictated by chefly-effort or ingredients involved. Not a bad plan, if you can make it clear to diners. Still, it's hard to know what would prompt punters to order the £7 little basket of okra fries, or the £12 small bowl of decent-enough goat curry (plus the extra bread or rice sides you need to make that work) — when that lentil-lamb-chilli chaat's delivering the same portion size and quite a lot more pleasure for half the price. But in a part of town where spontaneous food pitstops can often be eye-wateringly expensive or thoroughly disappointing, Little Kolkata's still firmly on the side of the angels.
Little Kolkata, 51-53 Shelton Street, WC2H 9JU.
Last Updated 13 December 2018
