Lunch at the Cinnamon Club

Posted on 2015/11/15 10:04:28 (November 2015).

[Thursday 12th November 2015]
Since Chie finished work at the start of October Erika just goes to nursery on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I thought it might be nice for me and Chie to meet up for lunch one of those days, but as it turned out I had to book this some time in advance, as Chie had such a busy schedule of lunches with her surprising number of Japanese friends who also don't have day jobs.

Although we do eat out with Erika quite a lot, we tend to restrict the sort of places we chose to go to when we do so, obviously in part to places where we don't think we're going to be sneered at for showing up with a toddler, but also where there's cuisine on offer which is going to suit a 3 year old's palate. She is fairly open minded, but not unreasonably can't really stomach anything spicy, so now and again Chie and I have a bit of a craving for Indian food.

Thus today, combining that requirement for Indian food, plus wanting to go somewhere a bit upmarket (again the sort of place we might not choose if we were with Erika), and the fact that I didn't want to go too far away from work, led to the obvious choice of the Cinnamon Club.

We've both been a bit nonplussed by upmarket Indian places in the past, but thought we'd give the genre one more go, and this time keep it relatively simple - rather than going overboard with a longwinded (and usually disappointing) tasting menu, we stuck to the set lunch menu. I started with a "kidney bean kebab" which I struggled to get excited about from the description, but had to concede it was actually very well flavoured.

My main course was in safer territory, involving paneer, and was probably the most convincing argument I've had to date that upscale Indian as a cuisine was actually worth bothering with. This demonstrated a very refined use of spices, and managed to be rich and satisfying without swimming in ghee, whilst also avoiding the common trap of restaurants at this end of the Indian food spectrum of being too fussy and awkward.

Really liked the interior as well - the old Westminster Library makes for a grand setting. I think Chie must have liked it too, as at the end of the meal, after we'd settled the bill, she decided to just linger longer with her massala tea and petit fours while I dutiffully hurried off back to work.

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