The spice girls

14 October 2004 by
The spice girls

This is a very different kind of Indian cooking. We're talking light, mostly grilled - and very contemporary. Yet the cuisine being offered at Amaya, the restaurant run by sisters Camellia and Namita Panjabi, is no fusion fad for curry fans with a pound or two to lose. It's based on ancient grill cooking, used by generations of Indian families - and later widely seen on the streets of Delhi as displaced families tried to make a living following partition.

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InCamellia (left) and Namita Panjabi are old hands at running Indian restaurants - in this country and all over the world.

This style of Indian food has rarely been seen in the UK before, the sisters assure me, as they explain their latest concept, which opens this week. The 99-seat restaurant in Knightsbridge will specialise in Indian kebab cooking, using three styles of grill - the sigri, tandoor and tawa - to produce most of the menu. Working in a show kitchen, chefs will grill fish, meat, seafood and vegetable kebabs in view of diners, as well as creating Indian soups and salads.

"Grilling on a sigri, tawa or tandoor has been used for generations in India," Namita explains, "but, even though tandoori food is done in bits, nothing like the diversity of choice we have here has been seen in this country before. That's the cachet of this restaurant."

She adds: "People in this country have been soaking up curries and rice for decades so we wanted to showcase a large part of Indian food that they hadn't seen before. This Indian food is contemporary, it matches the lifestyle of today, and it has a lot of taste and energy. It's the way the world is moving - in India as well as over here."

It's the fifth restaurant for the restaurant group run equally by Camellia, Namita and Namita's husband, Ranjit Mathrani. Namita opened the award-winning Chutney Mary 14 years ago as an antidote to boredom while Mathrani worked long hours as a merchant banker. The company went on to take over the legendary Veeraswamy restaurant in 1997, and the mid-market brand, Masala Zone, was launched four years later. Masala Zone now has two sites in London, with a third due to open in Earls Court, in December and five more in the planning stage.

Camellia, who was marketing director of the Raj Hotels in India, launching 40 restaurants over 30 years, including the Bombay Brasserie and Ile de Kashmir in Paris, joined three years ago. This year the company expects to sell 375,000 meals - before Amaya and the third Masala Zone open. By the end of the next financial year, they expect to sell half a million meals.

The idea for Amaya had been "buzzing around" for a number of years, according to Camellia, but it wasn't until they fell in love with the site in Halkin Arcade, SW1, a year ago, that work began in earnest. Designer Jeffrey Wilkes was employed to put together its eclectic look, using a detailed brief from the team and a lot of interaction at all stages.

"I believe God is in the detail, so we all get involved," Camellia says. "Ranjit is a fiend with the lighting so he's master of lighting. He is responsible for the glass gabled roof which lets in light during the day, through motorized blinds that block out bright sunlight while a simulated tropical sunset is created in the evening." There's also red sandstone imported from Agra on the walls, rosewood tables and chairs from India, five terracotta sculptures from Bengal and commissioned paintings by contemporary Indian artist Babu Xavier. The effect is smart, yet exotic.

Close to Belgravia and Knightsbridge, Amaya is in prime position for well-heeled local custom, businesspeople and ladies who lunch. And yes, we are talking Indian cuisine and lunch - a hard nut to crack, as most Indian restaurant owners will testify - yet Camellia has no doubts on that score. "Lunch will be an important part of the business," she says. "The food is gourmet grazing and there will be an express lunch platter. We cracked lunch in Masala World, we'll crack it here too.

"I think the most important thing to remember, though, is that there's no Indian restaurant like this one. I don't think any in the world compares with this - and I've been to most of them. Most Indian restaurants don't emphasise this aspect of the cooking. It's hard to find chefs who do two great kebabs, but impossible to find any who can do ten. If they were easy to find, people would have done this kind of thing before."

Getting it right, therefore, has meant Camellia and Namita finding good chefs in India, training them in some cases, and carrying out extensive testing in the restaurant's basement and Namita's home kitchens.

And getting the product and dishes right has been a challenge also. "We have to import rare spices such as fragrant cumin, sun-dried mango-powder, lichen moss, cinnamon leaves and Karras flower that you can't get here, as well as other high-quality spices such as fresh chillis and cumin," Camellia explains.

"Then we have to test everything. We know what taste should be from our research in India, but the trick is getting the taste right with the ingredients we find here because they behave differently. The spices are more intense in India - even the tomatoes and onions taste different - so everything has to be tested. We started out in the grilling tradition but we have evolved it from there. It has been a journey."

And do the sisters work well as a team, I ask? "Yes, we argue. We are all highly opinionated and it can be volatile," Camellia laughs, "but we are very close. We are good at different things and that makes a good synergy. I'm good at conceptualising and Namita has the aesthetic taste.

"As a family we have great passion to do the food of India as we see it. It's not a fusion thing; we're trying to seek out new happenings in India. There are a lot of people over there wanting to express themselves and I think we can combine the best of Indian food with style and hospitality." n

Amaya Cuisine
There are three Indian grilling methods:

  1. Tandoor - Large ovens of clay or iron which were set into the ground like a pit and traditionally used to bake breads. It is only since the early 1950s that they have been used to cook meals in restaurants, where they were put above ground and have since become barrel-shaped. Chef Hansraj Kapota was the first cook to put protein into the tandoor at the Moti Mahal restaurant in Delhi. He started the tandoori food tradition with Butter Chicken.

  2. Sigri - A traditional coal or wood piece cooking stove used all over India. A box or tub with coals is placed on a cooking stand with a grill on top. Vegetables and meat are cooked on skewers, with the flame touching the food. The traditional dates back to the royal hunts where visiting princes would enjoy meat kebabs made from peacock and quail. The most famous kebabs were those of the Muslim Navabs in Rapur and Lucknow.

  3. The Tawa - A large skillet made of a very thick sheet of iron or steel over fire to become a griddle. This produces a lighter heat than the other grills, good for vegetables and needing very little oil.

Menu selections
From the Sigri

  • Dori Kebab (soft lamb seekh kebab opened at the table by pulling a string)
  • Fillet of Sweet Lipped Trout (from the Arabian Sea, with coriander and mint)
  • Hamour in Pandan Leaf (with mustard, chilli and peanut)

From the Tandoor - Roasted Red Pepper Tikka (with fresh red chillies)

  • Nalli Barra (small shanks of lamb, garam masala, chilli)
  • Methi Hamour Tikka (spotted grouper with fenugreek leaf)

From the Tawa - Keema Kajeli (lamb mince, liver and kidney stir-fried with traditional robust spices)

  • Nizami Chicken Shikampur (famous hyderabadi royal kebab of minced chicken)
  • Rock Oysters (with coconut and ginger moilee sauce)

Curries - Kanauj Ka Gosht (lamb with floral notes)

  • Kadai Lasooni Palak (spinach with roasted garlic)
  • Bhojpuri Potato (crispy cubed stir-fried with mango powder)

Soups and salads - Yard Long Bean Turban Salad (with chicken and tamarind dressing)

  • Tandoori Hamour Fish Salad (sesame, lime and chilli dressing)
  • Minced Chicken in Parcels in Gem Lettuce (with coconut and mustard dressing)

Desserts - Strawberry Water Kulfi with rock salt

  • Plum Chutney Granita (kaffir lime granita and lychee jelly)
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