RBG Braves Aldgate (for Food)
advertisment
Related Content
- Will Work For Food (16/07/2007)
- The Properlys on Free Food (20/01/2008)
- Start the New Year Right - With Food (07/01/2009)
Like many bankers, Resting Banker Girl (RBG) has not set foot in the environs of London’s Liverpool Street for some time. Having had her faith shattered by several Data Base Operatives - also known as recruitment agencies - she prefers to keep as far away as possible from working bankers.
My announcement that a free meal was available at Kasturi was therefore met the kind of dull stare she has when she sees a girl wearing leggings as pants. (People, we will go into this one another time.)
“Sorry I can’t go. I can’t bear to see people pale, overweight and exhausted from working; it makes me nostalgic. Take the Hedgie.”
“He has problems going to the OTHER SIDE. I can’t risk it. The minute he sees a large bank he starts shouting things like ‘Hedgies are the real investment bankers’, and ‘I have more screens than you.'
Reluctantly she agreed and we headed for Kasturi on a Tuesday evening. My own recent experience of Indian food has been with newer restaurants that owe little to flock wallpaper and 300 item menus. Kasturi is hard to place: the ambiance and service are closer to the latter yet the food appears to be a hybrid of the comfortably reassuring and the more experimental.
On that note, the restaurant is having a fish festival throughout September and insisted we try some of their special dishes. The website promises food that would leave us ‘gasping for more’ which we both found slightly worrying. We had Salmon Tikka and Crab Kabab (sic) from the festival menu. We preferred the flavour and hotter spice of the crab, which is worth a try if you get there this month.
Personally I’m a sucker for the flowery writing on Indian menus, my favourite being a menu I found in South London years ago which promised to 'moisturise' the meat. Sadly I couldn’t find anything like that here, but if the Zeera Chicken was good enough for Emperor Akbar, then it was good enough for me. RBG went old school with Lamb Dupiaza. This is good food. Not great food, but good Indian food that is served by people who have been here a long time and know their customers well. From what they tell me, it’s heaving at lunch. At dinner there were about half a dozen occupied tables with both business types and natives of the sub-continent itself, always a good sign.
Service is attentive but not obsequious, and prices feel like they haven’t moved too much in the past decade or so. If you slave away near Liverpool Street then Kasturi is a local, one where you’re probably more likely to be remembered than you might be in tourist heavy Brick Lane. Kasturi Fish Festival is on until 30th September .
“Sorry I can’t go. I can’t bear to see people pale, overweight and exhausted from working; it makes me nostalgic. Take the Hedgie.”
“He has problems going to the OTHER SIDE. I can’t risk it. The minute he sees a large bank he starts shouting things like ‘Hedgies are the real investment bankers’, and ‘I have more screens than you.'
Reluctantly she agreed and we headed for Kasturi on a Tuesday evening. My own recent experience of Indian food has been with newer restaurants that owe little to flock wallpaper and 300 item menus. Kasturi is hard to place: the ambiance and service are closer to the latter yet the food appears to be a hybrid of the comfortably reassuring and the more experimental.
On that note, the restaurant is having a fish festival throughout September and insisted we try some of their special dishes. The website promises food that would leave us ‘gasping for more’ which we both found slightly worrying. We had Salmon Tikka and Crab Kabab (sic) from the festival menu. We preferred the flavour and hotter spice of the crab, which is worth a try if you get there this month.
Personally I’m a sucker for the flowery writing on Indian menus, my favourite being a menu I found in South London years ago which promised to 'moisturise' the meat. Sadly I couldn’t find anything like that here, but if the Zeera Chicken was good enough for Emperor Akbar, then it was good enough for me. RBG went old school with Lamb Dupiaza. This is good food. Not great food, but good Indian food that is served by people who have been here a long time and know their customers well. From what they tell me, it’s heaving at lunch. At dinner there were about half a dozen occupied tables with both business types and natives of the sub-continent itself, always a good sign.
Service is attentive but not obsequious, and prices feel like they haven’t moved too much in the past decade or so. If you slave away near Liverpool Street then Kasturi is a local, one where you’re probably more likely to be remembered than you might be in tourist heavy Brick Lane. Kasturi Fish Festival is on until 30th September .
Here Is The Writer : Ms Robinson
Ms Robinson was once a copywriter who wrote award winning ads and had eight hour lunches. Weary of the sex, glamour and lavish parties, she switched to corporate communications where she held the hands of executives and banned them from writing this execrable sentence: "In this ever changing world, the only constant is change itself." These days she writes for an increasing variety of people and has ghostwritten several books but if she told you who for, she'd have to kill you. Click here to read her blog, Woman of Experience.
view more articles by Ms Robinson
