Arriving at Covent Garden with a girl I’ve been dating for a while we spot a new restaurant tucked away down in the submerged section of the former fruit and veg market. I’m pretty surprised I’ve gotten away with calling it dating for so long, but it seems to be working well at the moment. We hadn’t been heading towards Cafe Chutney, in fact we hadn’t even heard of the place before, but it turned out to be a pretty nice stumble (check out the location map below if you want to hunt it down for yourself).
Covent Garden was crammed with tourists and weekenders looking for something to take their mind off the inevitable granular tick of sand leading them back to the harrowing reality of work on Monday morning. They flocked around the ledge overlooking one of the food squares enthralled by a group of musicians being led by a mohawk opera singer that looked like Pavaroti gone punk.
We were looking for somewhere to eat and I had a couple of restaurants in mind, but when we looked down with the others on the mohawk beast of a man blasting out “just one corneto”, or something like that, we saw Cafe Chutney. After some miscommunication with my ‘hot date’ we found ourselves inside the place, which is set down in an alcove corner of the square. The menu was small, but loaded with some authentic Indian dishes that we’d never heard of before, which is sort of refreshing considering the sheer number of Indian restaurants that are on our collective tick list. Despite this, I opted for the simple lamb curry that attracted my Northern appetite with mention of a ‘rich gravy’. However, my date went for an exotic purri dish, which sounded pretty exotic.
It wasn’t long before the food arrived, which is always a good sign, and we were both pretty pleased with our choices. Luckily, she was fine with sharing the food, so I got a chance to try both dishes. Hers was a strange collection of unexpected flavours and textures that seemed to work well somehow and mine was a rich and tasty curry with lush chunks of lamb and a little poppadom (it was incredibly little in fact).
For less than £15 we ate pretty well and on the way out the lady that owned the place randomly started chatting with us, which was pretty sweet. Apparently Cafe Chutney had only been open for six weeks and she still seemed nervous about the whole venture. Hopefully it’ll be a big hit, because it was a class find for us and there are probably few restaurants left in London where the owner’s on hand to have a friendly natter with you.
Cafe Chutney, Covent Garden review: 4/5
