Forget the steakhouses. Alex Larman finds Chatora City offers superb Indian cooking, a brilliant wine list and the irrepressible Jam Rahman, all at a fraction of the usual City bill…
If you have ever wanted to know what a truly wonderful Indian restaurant should be, ask Jam Rahman. The three piece suit-wearing restaurateur is an ebullient character, much given to self-deprecating comments about the increasingly snug fit of his waistcoat, but then when his establishment is serving food of the quality that Chatora City is, it would be hard not to spend your working days sampling the dishes.
Jam – somehow ‘Rahman’ sounds too officious – is the kind of maitre’d that you would want in any establishment, and it is no wonder that he was once GM at Veeraswamy. The restaurant’s website suggests that “If Chatora feels less like a restaurant and more like a very good dinner party, that’s Jam.”
Based on a recent visit, it is hard to disagree. Jam, in league with his head chef Imamuddin Khan, who cooks with ‘royal Awadhi patience, Punjabi fire and a London polish’, has come up with a restaurant where everything – from the sublime food and welcoming atmosphere to the brilliantly chosen wine list – is of the absolute highest calibre.
If you’re looking for the perfect spot to celebrate Diwali this year, then Chatora City should go straight to the top of the list, not least because the prices here are, quite intentionally, somewhere between two thirds and half of what you would expect to pay elsewhere in the City for comparable dishes. As Jam, who likens the crack team in the kitchen and front of house to The Expendables, puts it, “We like people to come here, have a good time, and come back.” There can be no doubt that they will.
The City of London is not necessarily the first place that one would look for a memorable Indian meal, given that its restaurants have traditionally catered for expense-account lunches and businessmen keen to impress their clients. Yet Chatora City is a welcome reminder that there is life beyond the familiar parade of steakhouses and interchangeable Italian establishments. We began with cocktails, an Old Fashioned and a martini, both made with a pleasing degree of assurance. I am increasingly of the opinion that a restaurant which cannot make a decent martini has no business offering cocktails at all, so this was an encouraging start.
The food was better still. Lamb chops are a useful test of any Indian kitchen, given the ease with which they can emerge either undercooked or reduced to something approaching shoe leather. Here, they were beautifully spiced and possessed of just the right degree of char, while the chicken wings were equally enjoyable, although they required a certain abandonment of dignity in their consumption.
The lamb shank was another considerable success, slow-cooked until the meat all but fell from the bone, with a sauce that suggested the kitchen had been prepared to spend rather more time on it than most of its competitors would consider economically sensible.
I am generally suspicious of ordering butter chicken in an ambitious Indian restaurant, not least because it can so often be a bland, sweet concession to diners who regard a hint of chilli as a personal affront. Yet Chatora’s version was excellent, rich and creamy without becoming cloying, and with sufficient complexity to justify its place on the table. The heritage naan was equally good, and considerably more interesting than bread has any right to be. It was tempting to order another, although by this stage the prospect of fitting into my own waistcoat was becoming increasingly distant.
The wine list has clearly been assembled by someone, almost certainly Jam, who understands that Indian food does not necessarily require either lager or an extravagantly priced white Burgundy. The Luvignac Picpoul de Pinet St Clair 2024 was crisp and refreshing, and worked particularly well with the starters, while the Visconti della Rocca Primitivo 2024 had enough fruit and substance to stand up to the lamb. Both were sensibly priced, which is not something that one can always say about wine in the Square Mile. We finished with gulab jamun, a dessert that has never made any pretence of being good for you, and was all the better for it.
It would be easy to suggest that Chatora City’s greatest asset is its food, but that would be to overlook Jam himself, whose presence gives the place much of its character. He is clearly enjoying himself enormously, and his enthusiasm is shared by the staff, who manage to be attentive without the hovering solemnity that can make eating in expensive restaurants feel like undergoing a minor medical procedure. The Expendables comparison is amusing, although I suspect that Jam’s team has rather more useful talents than Sylvester Stallone and his ageing mercenaries.
There are grander Indian restaurants in London, and certainly more expensive ones, but I doubt that many offer a more enjoyable evening. I shall be returning, although perhaps not before investing in a rather larger waistcoat.
Chatora City, 4 Great St Thomas Apostle, London EC4V 2BH. Chatora City is marking Diwali with special set menus from Monday 2nd to Saturday 7th November, ahead of the festival on Sunday 8th November. The menus are £50 per person for vegetarian and £55 for non-vegetarian. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.chatoracity.co.uk.
