I always think it’s best to go with a recommendation for a restaurant. My good friend Judy suggested Rasa Samudra, a Keralan Restaurant on Charlotte Street and coming from someone who spent 6 months in India you’d hope it was a good suggestion.
The place is incredibly easy to find (mainly because it is the only pink restaurant I know of) right at the start of Charlotte Street (Oxford Street end – nearest Tube Tottenham Court Road). As you walk through the doors you are greeted by warm friendly staff who’ll show you to your table. There are two parts to the restaurant, the front part which is mainly made up of tables of twos and fours and the back part which is for larger groups.
Upon being seated we were given the menus and ordered two bottles of Cobra which arrived ice cold and quickly – important when the choice on the menu so diverse. The menu was fantastic, despite spending an awful lot of time eating curry many of the dishes were new to me and the choice was excellent, enough that there is something for everyone yet not so much that you’re drowned in choice.
The menu is predominantly fish and vegetarian food as it is Kerala so the authenticity is clearly high. In the end my friend and I went for the following:
Konju Manga Curry: King prawns cooked with turmeric, chillies, green mango and coconut
Kappayum Meenum: King fish cooked in a sauce made from onions, fried chillies, turmeric and ginger and cassava.
Paratha: A Kerala specialty – wheat dough layered and coiled into a coir mat shape then cooked on the griddle.
Lemon rice and Coconut rice
It’s hard to know where to start really – both dishes were incredibly tasty and showed perfectly how Indian food is so much more than just hot spicy food. The flavours for each dish despite sharing many of the same ingredients were completely different. The Konju Manga was incredibly creamy and has many subtle flavours accentuated by the plump perfectly cook prawns and coconut rice (which according to the waiter was the correct match for the curry). Once we’d cleansed our palettes with a couple of mouthfuls of Cobra we started on the Kappayum Meenum. I’ve not tried King Fish for a while and had forgotten how dense and fishy it is. The sauce cut through this fantastically and the extra spice reminded me of curries from Northern India.
One of the surprises of the evening was without a doubt the Paratha. I was expecting something a like a chapatti but actually ended up with a savoury pancake type thing… Whatever it was like it was delicious, doughy yet light, absorbent yet never soggy. If you only go to Rasa for one thing make sure it’s for that!
So overall what would I give it? 9/10 definitely. The menu was incredibly diverse and I’ll be back to try the rest of the dishes without a doubt – I suffered some serious food envy!
