Kebab festival at Colonel Saab, Trafalgar Square, London

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There’s a kebab festival going on at Colonel Saab restaurants at the moment. And I was so glad to have a really good excuse to revisit this simply gorgeous dining establishment, either at Trafalgar Square or their Holborn branch, where I recently had an incredible Indian high tea.

The restaurant is an ode to Colonel Saab, aka Colonel Manbeer Choudhary, an Indian Army officer, and his wife, Mrs Binny Choudhary, the parents of owner Roop Partap Choudhary. When you get there, look up to gaze at the amazing chandeliers and take a moment to check out the works of art and artefacts adorning the walls, collected over many years by the Choudhary family.

We took a corner table and spent a moment or two browsing the menu of 12 regional Indian kebabs that I would bet you haven’t tasted anywhere else in London. Kebabs (not the skewered type) have been a staple of Indian cuisine since the 1200s, and their evolution is being celebrated by Colonel Saab.

Head chef Rajeev Runa has curated dishes such as Awadhi Galouti lamb kebab, Shikandari Raan goat, Peshawar Chapli kebab, Malai Lobster with creamy coconut milk, and for vegetarians, there’s a mushroom Galouti. The menu showcases just two desserts: almond rice pudding and bread and butter pudding. 

I have a penchant for chicken, and so my choice was the rarely seen Mughlai Shabnami Chicken. These are tender pieces of chicken, beautifully seasoned, delicately stuffed with boiled egg. It was served with mint sauce and two wheels of corn on the cob and a piece of lemon.

We also tried the Banno Kebab, a chicken dish that hails from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. Tender boneless chicken pieces are coated in a distinctive egg wash before cooking, marinated in yoghurt, and lightly spiced before being roasted. Both were scrumptious, and of course we shared them. 

We paired these dishes with biryani rice – well, in an Indian restaurant, it goes without saying, doesn’t it?  To make the ensemble even more interesting, we also enjoyed the deep tawny brown dal makhani. 

This is a dish that generally takes around two hours to cook; however, we were told it took a day and a half to prepare because they boil it on one day, then season, add the butter, and slow cook the next day.

This dal is certainly India’s more popular lentil and kidney bean dish, and here it was superbly tasty and reassuringly comforting.

Of course we had a naan bread, but I also took the opportunity to try the char koni naan bread, a speciality of Hyderabadi. This looked more like a cake than a naan and was surprisingly tasty. It’s baked in the oven with refined flour, seasoned with herbs including Kasuri methi – the dried leaves of the fenugreek plant – and offered a motley mix of flavours.

For dessert, the bread pudding was visually enticing, made from bread served in reduced milk and topped with silver leaf for a bit of glamour. The saffron, pistachio and especially the cardamom flavours were distinct. For those who may find this combo overwhelming, the alternative is the almond rice pudding dessert, which offers a far less in-your-face culinary experience.

There is a veritable cocktail and drinks menu, but I stuck to a Punchu tropical fruit mocktail since I was driving.

Verdict:

The kebab festival is a whole new culinary journey for those of us who love Indian cuisine. Don’t miss it – it is likely to end in late September.

Colonel Saab 

Holborn Hall, London
Trafalgar Square, London