Review at a glance: ★★★☆☆
The Himalayas — I’m not a regular. But 13 years ago I was being bounced around like ice in a shaker in a Land Rover scrambling to Darjeeling, where muzzy photographs suggest I spent most of my time either posing by steam trains or drinking port in a local bar. Hard to say I made the most of it.
Pleasing news, then, to hear of Vatavaran, a restaurant from Rohit Ghai promising “a taste of the Himlayas” — presumably something beyond coal fumes and Taylor’s. Ghai’s CV is a magazine of hits: time with Atul Kochhar at Benares; a stint as JKS executive chef overseeing Trishna and Gymkhana; the famous move to Jamavar, where he won a Michelin star in 10 months. Then came the going-it-alone, first opening Kutir, then Manthan. Lately he has ventured globally, done a bit of telly, picked up a few hundred thousand Instagram followers. Not what you’d call small fry.
With business partner Abhi Sangwan, he’s chosen Beauchamp Place for Vatavaran, one of those Knightsbridge streets that’s both famous (shopping these days; used to be chock-a-block with brothels) and surprisingly annoying to get to. Not that this matters in SW1, the only part of London where black cabs still hunt in packs. It’s not the most Himalayan setting. But then the Himalayan thing is muted. How muted? No one mentioned it at all. The menu says nada. It’s all online: whoever persuaded Ghai to do the mountain sell there did him a disservice, and diners too: the expectations it sets will not be met. Besides, the website is a compendium of guff. Reads one emetic line: “Each dish is crafted with ingredients that speak to the bounty of the land, charred to perfection to evoke the rugged yet fertile spirit of the Himalayan ranges.” What, butter chicken? Behave.
A bar sits at the entrance, before the restaurant rises over three floors. Things improve on ascension. The very top is a beautiful enclave of wood polished to a shine, for either drinks after supper or private parties. Below that is a moss green, clubby dining room with tablecloths, good art and pretty panels of orange blossom wallpaper. It is romantic. The cornflower blue space below is bleaker. Beneath the roof lantern runs a fat grey and white ribbon that might represent mist, or rain, or perhaps a printing error.
Menus are the same throughout. They’re keen on drinks first — cocktail lists arrive long before the food menus. Skip these £16 mixes (one was acrid, the other feeble). Plenty of excellent wines, though, offered by glass, carafe and bottle, with many grouped at a similar price, so diners may choose by preference rather than cost.
Lamb chops were cashmere soft and as pink as a Seventies bathroom
To eat, there is allegedly a tasting menu — nowhere to be seen for this review — or à la carte where prices seem fair but tot up vertiginously. Much is excellent; Ghai is not only an accomplished chef but an assured one. Lamb chops were cashmere soft and as pink as a Seventies bathroom; beautiful, too, thanks to a black cumin and ginger rub. Prawns were given a coat of peanut and sesame and ghati masala, fried until they felt like snacks to sink in front of a game with a pint. Misfits for the rest of the menu, perhaps, but addictive.
Later, black lentil dal heavy with butter was scooped up devotedly alongside lobster in ginger and fennel-heavy Nilgiri sauce (named for mountains a mere 50-hour drive from the Himalayas). We ate it greedily, as if starved. Perhaps we were hungry from other disappointments, like indifferent duck in a tousle of halved Roscoff onions and tomato, or scallops in a grey puddle of who-knows-what, not improved by the black truffle shaved at the table. But then the truffle couldn’t have improved things, given most of it ended up on my lap.
“Atmosphere”, the name means in Sanskrit; we didn’t have much of that. I’m convinced there’s a better restaurant here than the one experienced; one that comes alive at night, when the bar has a DJ and people stay late. One where the staff are more at ease, with Ghai in the kitchen. And one that quietly drops the Himalayan shtick. Though I’d take more port, if they had it.
Meal for two about £220. 14-15 Beauchamp Place, SW3 1NQ, vatavaran.uk
This article has been amended to remove a reference to Ghai as the world’s first Indian chef to win a Michelin star within a year.
