The most talked about opening this week in London has been that of Chakra. Arjun and Andy Varma, two Kolkata boys educated at St Xavier’s have made big news in the UK. Chakra is the hippest new entrant into the restaurant scenario in London. Situated in stylist Notting Hill, I can see it becoming the Indian answer to Nobu.
Equipped with a traditional maharaj from a royal household in Rajasthan and a halwai, Chakra dishes out dry chhole, sweet potato chaat garnished with mint, kebabs presented poetically in a very minimalistic and French hors d’oeurves style. To be able to make lamb chops look lyrical and chaat appear chic is an art which master chef Andy has mastered.
So what is the concept behind Chakra? Explains Arjun, “The human body has seven Chakras or energy points. Yoga teaches practioners to control and strengthen these points. We believe that a good diet helps to achieve these balances. The concept behind the restaurant is recognising what is good in Indian food and to emphasise the bits that reinforces the trinity of body, mind and soul.” This to me is not purely a sales pitch because the cuisine in Chakra is both sumptuous yet healthy.
Okay, but why would I as a consumer select Chakra over any other Indian restaurant? “Chakra gives customers the chance to experience the highly evolved and subtle recipes previously privy to the royal families in India. We have studied them and presented them here for our guests,” says the team.
With an elite clientele which reads like a Who’s who — King Abdullah of Jordan, Robbie Williams, Bryan Adams and Alice Copoer — they have it going for them.
The Vama brothers as they are called in London opened Vama on the King’s Road in 1998. Pre-Vama days they ran a restaurant in New Delhi called Dukes Place, here they were identified by Prannoy Roy to present a regular cookery show. With the experience of running Vama for a decade and of being specialists in events and contract catering, they opened Chakra.