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Indian Accent

Indian Accent

The mid-week night that we visited Indian Accent the place was BUZZING. This is surely, in part, thanks to the incredible team, whizzing about efficiently, smiles on their faces, making conversation where it was wanted and vibing off each other to make sure customers had everything they needed. I’ll be honest, I’d actually turned up to Indian Accent in a foul temper, having spent the afternoon arguing with the boyfriend over the logistics of an upcoming trip we were taking. Five minutes into Indian Accent and I was laughing my head off. No exaggeration. Although the champagne certainly helped.

Mayfair’s Indian Accent is upmarket Indian cuisine at its best. Like its New York and New Delhi locations (the latter currently sits at No.90 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants), Chef Manish Mehrotra has put a modern twist on dishes, with ingredients like burrata appearing alongside the more expected spices and dahls. There’s so much to choose from that we were encouraged to opt for the chef’s tasting menu which takes most of the choice out of your hands. We happily obliged.

We began with a row of five puchkas (a little crispy sphere), each with a different flavoured water to pour into. Downing one after one, we started with palette cleansing watermelon flavours and ended with creamy spiced yoghurt. The teeny tiny blue cheese naan which arrived next was so insanely delicious I was almost cross (again) when it finished. I mean, why, oh why would they tempt us like that, only for it to be gone in one bite? (I actually asked Chef, apparently the cheese oozes out of larger ones – fair enough) It came with a shot-sized mug of curry sauce and again, we could have drunk a pint. Although admittedly that would have been a bit odd.

Individual elegant small plates continued, topped with watermelon here and parmesan there. A delicate sphere housed potato chaat, whilst earthy kashmiri morels in a creamy sauce provided the base for a wafer thin parmesan papad to perch.  The fourth, fifth and sixth courses have two options to choose from – our waiter brings both so we can experience the lot – cubed pieces of tofu in a masala sauce with asparagus and shishito pepper appear alongside a golden piece of baked cod. Chicken malai tikka is elevated to next level with green chilli cream, light sugar snap peas and shavings of summer truffle.

The stand out dish of the night was, for us, the soy keema. The veggie treat had all the consistency of the traditional meat dish but with even more flavour. It was topped with a runny quail’s egg, and a bread skewer for fighting over dunking. Veggies will be very happy here indeed. We scooped up every last piece of dahl with buttery naans.

We were less sold on dessert – a fluffy, rose flavoured cloud like construction with flecks of gold – but were told it had won ‘best dessert in the whole of New York’ or some such, so perhaps that says more about us than it. Tell the sommelier what wine you like, he’ll bring you something magic – a white burgundy in our case.

Indian Accent

Aside from a la carte, tasting and brunch menus (with not an avocado in sight!), there’s a 45-minute £19 business lunch and a two course pre-theatre at £28 – which means that Indian Accent really is a restaurant for all occasions.

For bookings, visit http://www.indianaccent.com/

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