TOM JACKSON60 The Times Magazine
has been around since 1969 ( just like me) and
the delightful manager is always on hand to
offer a better table, a free liqueur and a dish of
After Eights. But Cath comes back quite
a lot now – her children are at university in
Britain – and there’s only so many times a
year you can go to Paradise.
So this time, I thought we’d go to Manthan
in Mayfair, for a bit of posh. “It’s still a curry,”
I assured her. “It’ll just a make a change.”
And it did. And it was absolutely cracking.
In no way at all is Manthan just another curry
house, but it is definitely the best curry house
in the world. Which is no surprise when you
consider that it is the latest manifestation of
the genius of Rohit Ghai, the Punjabi chef
initially behind Benares, Trishna, Gymkhana
and Hoppers, then, with front-of-house Abhi
Sangwan, Jamavar, Bombay Bustle (a few
doors down from Manthan) and the peerless
Kutir in Chelsea, where I ate in its first week,
two or three years ago, with my food writer
friend Amandip Uppal, but had such a good
time that I forgot to write about it.
It could easily have happened again, such
good times and great cooking did I have at
Manthan. But that simply wouldn’t be fair
on Rohit or Abhi. Or you, because I wouldn’t
want you to miss out.
We drove into Maddox Street, Esther and
I, because there are miles of free-after-6.30pm
yellow lines round there to drop your car on,
bang outside wherever you want to go, which
saves two smelly half-hours in an Uber and
saves you 40-odd quid plus all the booze thatEating out Giles Coren
henever my old pal Catherine
Kenyatta comes back to England
(where she grew up) from Kenya
(where she lives) for a visit, we go
for a catch-up curry at Paradise in
South Hampstead – with a handful
of other 1980s north London
rejects – and I won’t hear a word
said against it, and nor will Cath.
Formerly known as “Curry Paradise” – a
qualification they dropped years ago when the
owners reckoned it was no longer necessary
to include the bill of fare in the restaurant
name – it stands on South End Road, barely
100 yards from where Cath was living when
we first met in our schooldays, and where
her dad still is. It is without question both the
best curry house in the world and a perfectly
ordinary curry house, as all curry houses
should be, and bucks the general global truism
that anywhere called “Paradise” anything- Paradise Beach, Paradise Cove, Paradise
Farm, Paradise Backpackers’ Lodge, Paradise
Walk-In Genitourinary Clinic – is absolutely
guaranteed to be hell on earth.
Paradise is lovely. It is warm, gently lit,
always full and bubbling with comfortable,
learned chat, the food is unchangingly ace
(can’t beat their prawn puri, lamb tikka bhuna,
stuffed paratha and a couple of Cobras), it
W
‘After conical papads on
gold-coloured crockery
came a dazzling
procession of street-
inf luenced starters’
Manthan