Think your vindaloo is on the bland side? Three hot new restaurants are experimenting with chilli and discovering flavours that will tingle jaded tastebuds
Xu, Som Saa and Ikoyi are three of the most fêted new restaurant openings in Britain. Xu is Taiwanese, bringing the style of old Taipei to central London. Som Saa in Spitalfields serves Thai food as you might find it in Thailand, without a bland red or green curry in sight. Ikoyi in Piccadilly, the newest of the three, riffs expansively on traditional West African flavours. Three very different restaurants, and yet what they have in common are dishes that might once simply have been described as “spicy”. In fact, all three menus have options apt to blow the socks off the unsuspecting.
The past few decades have been a crash course in capsaicin for the British palate. The scale used to be simple: there was vindaloo at one end and korma at the other. This system has been rendered sadly inadequate by the evolution of Britain’s restaurant scene. Diners are being introduced to the full variety of spice that life has to offer, but how do each of these restaurants create their unique profiles?
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