Our last night in London took us to Porte Des Indes for dinner, a French/Indian Fusion restaurant just off of Oxford Circus. I had never heard of these two cuisines intersecting before, but the combination was super.
As locations go, it’s just a block north of Oxfrod Circus close to Marble Arch. Fairly easy to get to from the north end of central London, and lots to do around the area before dinner if you want to walk around.
As relative Indian Food novices, we kept it pretty simple, but were still incredibly impressed. For a starter, we had the Bombay Chaat, a popular vegetarian roadside fare drizzled with yogurt, chutneys, and gram flour crisps. This was a nice way to start the meal, but didn’t blow us away. Much better were the Sunhere Samosa, full of mined chicken and veggies with a nice mango chutney. 4 of these in an order went away in a flash.
We followed the reviews and got the Poulet Rouge as one of our entrees, and it was the best thing we had all night. It’s similar to a chicken tikka masala if you’ve had that before, but with a little kick we couldn’t quite put our finger on but really enjoyed. The dish is described as shredded chicken marinated in red spices and yogurt, served in a creamy sauce, so one of those red spices must have been what we noticed.
For the beef dish we took the server’s recommendation and chose the Chumde Karaikal, a stir-fry dish with roasted cinnamon, aniseed, cloves, black pepper and coconut chips. It was also excellent, but the Poulet Rouge still won the night.
We got some basmati rice and cheese naan to go with everything. The cheese naan had a real bleu cheese influence, which wasn’t totally our thing, but we should have figured as much being at a French/Indian Fusion spot.
We paired it all with a Fat Bastard red wine that went great with the food, and overstayed our welcome finishing it. We should have taken the hint when they started putting away the tables. Or when they pulled away all the chairs. Or when the servers were walking around in their street clothes. Or when they closed the coat check. Or when they shut off the music. Well, shutting off the music worked… I think we just weren’t ready to be done with London yet.
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