Koyal

I have written previously about the background of Koyal and its talented head chef Nand Kishor. At the meal today, pani puris were very good, the little hollow fried dough ball spheres delicate and crisp, with a flavoured water that you pour into each puri before eating each in single bite, the liquid bursting in the tongue. The liquid was quite spicy and this was a really excellent example of a pani puri (15/20).

A bonus dish was orange-flavoured sweet potatoes and kale chaat with tamarind chutney. This was less successful. Much as I love most chaat, the combination of sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes, and then the extra sweetness of the orange, just tasted odd. This wasn’t a dish that I ordered so I won’t score it, but to be honest I don’t think that it works very well. 

Hara pyaaz, aloo and palak ke bhajiye was a take on a Dastaan classic. This kale and spring onion bhajia is unrecognisable from the high street onion bhajias that we have grown up with in local tandoori restaurants. The version here completely avoids greasiness and yet also has no issues with being too dry: it is a goldilocks bhajia: with just the right texture, and plenty of flavour packed in (16/20).

I had pre-ordered an Arnaud Tauzin chicken, perhaps the best chicken that money can buy. This is from the Landes region in the south-west of France.  The birds are fed on maize grown on the Tauzin family farm along with milk, and spend almost all of their time outdoors. The resulting meat has superb flavour. The bird was prepared in three different ways. One was as a regular chicken tikka. This was lovely, with the much greater complexity of flavour of the high-quality chicken coming through. Even better was a dish that was reminiscent of malai tikka in texture, a large slab of meat that had been marinated and cooked with a little gram flour. This was really remarkable, with the fabulous and flavour of the chicken, lifted a little by the spices but retaining great complexity in the flavour of the meat. This was an off-menu dish so I won’t score it, but the chicken tikka would be approaching 17/20 and the malai-like dish approaching 18/20. It is great to see how a really high-class ingredient can shine in a classic Indian dish, and it is a pity that few people would be likely to pay the price difference to experience this.

Spinach with mushrooms was a lovely side dish, managing to pack in lots of concentrated spinach flavour into the dish, nicely complemented by the earthiness of the mushrooms. Dastaan always did superb spinach dishes, and Koyal has carried on in that vein (16/20). Stone bass tikka was superb, served with an excellent tomato chutney. The fish had lovely texture, and the flavours of its spicy marinade had been absorbed beautifully. The chutney added a freshness as contrast to the richness of the fish (16/20).

The third use of the Arnaud Tauzin chicken was in a methi chicken curry, here mixed in with some regular chicken. The fresh fenugreek leaves added a lot of pungent flavour to the curry, and of course the chicken itself tasted lovely. I won’t score this as it was an off-menu dish, but if I was to do so it would easily be 16/20.

As a side dish, garlic potatoes with wild mustard were particularly good today. There was plenty of garlic flavour with a gentle hint of mustard, but the key to the dish was the texture of the potatoes. They were just firm enough to avoid falling apart, yet were just tender enough to avoid hardness. The use of lovely Ratte potatoes meant that the potatoes had terrific flavour too.  This was a real balancing act that paid off (16/20). Tarka dhal is another fine side dish here, cooked overnight and having the dark, brooding smokiness that the best versions of this dish possess, the texture of the lentils superb (16/20). Garlic naan was excellent, the texture soft and fluffy, and with plenty of garlic flavour.

This was a lovely meal, and it was a particular joy to try the Tauzin chicken. However, the high level of skill in the kitchen can be seen here in the way that they handle humble ingredients with such skill. The bhajias, dhal and mustard potatoes were all superb. Service was excellent. The bill came to £85 per person with beer to drink, but this included an £80 charge for the specially ordered Arnaud Tauzin chicken. If you ordered entirely from the regular menu and had beer to drink then a typical cost per person might be around £60.

Further reviews: 27th Dec 2024 | 06th Dec 2024 | 06th Oct 2024