Near Liverpool Street, an airy, well-spaced and business-friendly contemporary restaurant offering Indian food of good quality; as at the parent establishment, the Cinnamon Club, however, prices give nothing away.
Airy and spacious, but darkly-furnished, there’s something very American about this new Indian restaurant near Liverpool Street. With its unconcealed ducting, it might, say, be a downtown NYC steakhouse.
This is, however, very much not a steakhouse, and the style of its refined Indian cuisine – often described as being twinned with a European approach to presentation – will be familiar to anyone who has ever eaten at the parent establishment, Westminster’s celebrated Cinnamon Club.
One almost wonders why it’s taken them so long to get here. The Cinnamon Club – a brave opening seven years ago, in what to this day is something of a void for decent restaurants – has always been known as quite a business/Establishment hang-out, so the City might seem to be a natural location for a second branch. The new premises certainly have plenty of space for business discussions, and service is friendly and discreet too.
You do pay for it all though. We visited a first few after opening, when a limited menu was still being offered, but prices were already pretty much in line with Westminster. In the short term, that’s a bit of a cheek – if you’re not sorted out to the extent you’re offering a full menu, don’t charge full prices. Even when they are fully up and running though – by now, presumably – prices struck as as being too high to gather much of a following during a deepening recession. And the standard of the cooking was generally high, but not invariably so.
For lighter meals – but then the food is pretty light to start with! – you can also eat in the smart bar area, which trades as ‘Anise’.
