This August, try a new London

“Be not blinded by the light
It’s the fount of generation
Be not afraid of the dark
It is your destination…”
From Kya Bhole, Bhej Dey Soney Aur
Chandi Key Goley
(Senior Editor Bachchoo)

Sometime in the 1980s the Sunday Times, London, asked me to recommend an “Indian” restaurant. They asked Salman Rushdie, Ismail Merchant and a few others the same question and photographed each one of us at the eatery of our choice and printed a brief interview. Salman chose the Bombay Brasserie, Ismail the venerable Veeraswamy off Piccadilly Circus.
We were not told each other’s choices.
At the time, having been a pamphleteer and agitator for a few years in London’s East End I thought I’d be honest and choose the late-night Lahore Kebab House in an alley off the Commercial Road, a tiny one-room-with-a-grill-behind-the-counter establishment with two tables and four chairs which we frequented after a hard evening’s rabble-rousing.
The reporter/interviewer was somewhat taken aback by my choice but honestly followed it up by inviting me to meet him at the address and conduct an interview.
He duly turned up in Umberstone Street with a photographer’s crew wielding silver reflecting umbrellas. The proprietor of the LKH was not very welcoming. He didn’t understand — then — that the uses of publicity are unanticipatedly sweet. He regarded the whole episode as a nuisance and an interruption of trade when I occupied one of the tables posing for photographs, a seekh kebab and naan in hand. I gave an interview — the usual flannel about authenticity, uniqueness, freshness and very prominently the fact that the food was cheap and that one could bring one’s own wine to the table and so avoid paying the exorbitant mark-up that other restaurants put on their wine lists. The workforce at that time of the morning was one chef putting kebabs on spits and Rashid, one of the partners who owned it.
I think they were happy to see the backs of us that Wednesday. Come Sunday the article was published in one of Britain’s best-selling weekend papers. On Monday I got a call at the TV office where I worked from Rashid.
“Farrukh sahab, what have you done? There were queues of white people half way round the block last night and the kebabs ran out in half an hour.”
“You wait till tomorrow. The readers from Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire will take at least a day to get to you!”
And get to the LKH they did. In three weeks the establishment had expanded into the neighbouring shop. I was invited with any colleagues I cared to bring from Channel 4 for a Lahori meal at which I was asked to choose any dish. I, of course, went for the paya and nihari, in addition to the lamb chops.
Today, through circumstances far beyond the initial momentum of that Sunday Times article, the LKH has branches all over England and does a very brisk trade. The Umberstone Street parent branch is now two large eating halls. The food is as good as it ever was and one may take one’s own New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (or cans of beer if you choose!) from the Gujarati liquor store which spotted this doorstep marketing opportunity at £8 a bottle instead of the £24 that some other joint would charge. (Cheapskates of the world unite?)
I have never contemplated a career as a restaurant critic — or shall I say I have never been offered a job as one. I am conscious that July and August are the months when the great South Asian invasion of London takes place. The idle or bustling rich, on their way to Canada or the US, or those with relatives in, shall we say, Slough or Dundee, pass through London and live in hired apartments or those bought under pseudonyms or by surrogates using various shades of money.
It is to these I recommend the LKH (no, I am not on their payroll, alas!) and would point out that all the branches have TV sets suspended on high and invariably display Test cricket if a match is on or are tuned to some hopeless Bollywood film. Besides, the racket from people talking in the parent East End branch is such that one cannot go there hoping for a reasonable or sotto voce exchange of ideas. One shouts above the din and the people at tables around you do the same till the Tower of Babel is put to shame by the proliferation of voluminous tongues. No? For a quieter life try the Norwood branch.
Now I know that the typical South Asian Tourist (TSAT) will not know where Norwood is because it’s in South London and the only time they venture to cross the river is when they want to be photographed at Greenwich with their feet on either side of the “0” meridian of longitude. Nevertheless, a friendly taxi driver will take you there and charge you an exorbitant sum. Be brave. Take a train or the Underground to Brixton and bus from there.
In this year of the Olympics it is predicted that London will be overrun and jammed. The usual sites will be painful to get to. The shopping malls will be bedlam. My advice to the TSAT is to try a new London. Descend by Tube to Brixton market and buy some salt fish, ackee (a vegetable) and yam to take back and cook in the central London apartment.
Avoid the palaces and the art galleries off Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square. Seek out the Dulwich Art Gallery instead. If it’s sunny, hire a car and drive 40 miles to Whitstable to eat oysters.
Don’t even try to book West End musicals. Instead, if you are in London on August 2 or 3, come and see a new opera based on Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.
— Yes, okay, I wrote the libretto and my son Danyal Dhondy wrote the music.