A Bangladeshi revives English food

LONDON: When Indians come to London, they manage to find fine cuisine from all over the world to stimulate their palate, but the one thing that has been missing is a trendy restaurant serving good old British food. That’s all changed now, thanks to a new upmarket restaurant situated in the heart of London’s foodie-land at Borough Market called Roast, paying homage to the great British tradition of a roast lunch on Sundays. The unusual thing is that the revival in British food has been brought about by a Bangladeshi.

 

Iqbal Wahhab loves new challenges and finds success in whatever he picks up, and Roast is no different. “There have been many critics who have turned up their noses arguing what does a brown man know about English food. But my punters who are filling the restaurant everyday obviously think I am doing something right,” said Wahhab with a mischievous glint in his eye.

 

Wahhab is no stranger to controversy. In 1998, when he was editing the food magazine Tandoori he had raised the hackles of Indian restaurant owners by calling their waiters’ ‘miserable gits’. The strongly worded article condemning the poor quality of service, décor and design of Indian curry houses roused such passions that Wahhab received 18 death threats and advice from a friend in the Special Branch to ‘go away for some time’. He heeded the advice, but not one to give up, he successfully sued the Bangladeshi Catering Association for liable.

 

But that was not enough revenge for Wahhab. “I decided now I will show them how it is done,” Wahhab told DNA over a cup of expresso at Roast. Armed with plans and a fire in his belly, Wahhab took on 1200 square feet of the Westminster Library next to the Houses of Parliament and built Britain’s trendiest Indian restaurant called The Cinnamon Club. It was an overnight success. “I wanted the experience of eating at an Indian restaurant to be special. Not just throwing everything onto one dish so that you can’t even taste the different flavours, which is what the thousands of Indian restaurants all over the country had turned Indian food into,” said Wahhab. Today with an annual turnover of £5 million, The Cinnamon Club is the highest grossing Indian restaurant in the world.

 

Having conquered the Indian challenge, the 40-something year-old turned his attention to English food. “When I was at school, I was one of the few children who actually liked school lunches with their traditional English fare,” said Wahhab who migrated to Britain with his parents and two elder siblings when he was only 8-months-old.

 

“From the third day we were turning customers away because we were so full,” says Wahhab of Roast’s popularity, which opened four months ago. “The most difficult task was getting a chef who could do English food because most cooks train in French cooking and consider English food infradig,” he adds.

 

Roast’s menu changes twice a day depending on the fresh produce available in the Borough market that day. But one dish that is always on offer is roast chicken. “We sell 40 chickens a day which is high by any standards, and one week we sold 1,400 oysters,” Wahhab adds proudly. His personal favourite at Roast is steak and ox kidney pudding, but when he cooks at home for his friends it’s spicy lamb curry that goes down a treat.

 

The £45 a head restaurant has mostly white patrons so far, but Wahhab hopes that come summer and the tourists should flock in. So Mumbaikers, looking for British food in London? Here’s the place to go to!