AD What do you get if you combine a curry with fine dining influenced dishes? The answer is Cinnamon Kitchen, a great choice of Indian restaurant for a special occasion or get together with friends.

Scanning through the top rated ‘Indian’ restaurants near me on OpenTable, Cinnamon Kitchen quickly caught my eye because of their 9 Dish Sharing Feast. My partner and I are the sort of people that struggle to choose from a menu. We either go for old faithful’s or order a variety of dishes to share. The 9 Dish Sharing Feast is a set menu which meant we were brought a selection of some of Cinnamon Kitchen’s most popular dishes without the angst of choosing what to eat. We were served a combination of familiar dishes and original taste combinations, find out more about the food and our amazing cocktails below.

The 9 Dish Sharing menu at Cinnamon Kitchen was a great way to try a range of dishes

Cinnamon Kitchen London City Restaurant Review

Booking online was really easy via OpenTable. The booking system even asked if it was for a special occasion. I never think to say when I’m booking a birthday meal, but this was really easy to do. This made the visit a bit more special too as when we arrived the hostess asked whose birthday it was and wished my partner a "Happy Birthday". At the end of the meal they also brought over a birthday pudding with a candle. 

When booking I chose the time we wanted and selected that we were going for the 9 Dish Sharing Feast experience, but they also have a BBQ Brunch Menu and Afternoon Tea (or High Chai on The Terrace) at weekends and a set lunch menu weekdays. Of course you can also choose individual dishes off the main A La Carte menu too. There is the option for booking the private dining room or Terrace, but we chose the main dining space to eat in. 

What's the 9 Dish Sharing Feast like?

While the menu (and dishes) changes regularly, the 9 Dish Sharing Feast is a regular feature. It must be ordered for a minimum of 2 people and while you can choose the meat or vegetarian option, they ask that the whole table orders the same . A nice touch is that on the back of the menu it lists where the food has been sourced from including the region and town/ city in Britain or India.

For the starter we were brought little dishes of: 

• Green Pea Kachori Chaat which is a pastry style dumpling filled with spicy green pea served with curried chickpea.
• Pahadi Tikka, pieces of tandoori chicken breast with fennel and coriander.
• A Hakka style Chilli Paneer with ginger and soy. The paneer was cubed and had a great taste and texture.
• Delicate pieces of grilled pink aubergine topped with tamarind chutney and peanut crumble. The aubergine was perfectly cooked so it was soft and melted in the mouth.

Grilled Pink Aubergine and Green Pea Kachori Chaat with curried chickpeas

Hakka style Chilli Paneer

For the main course we had: 

• Kashmiri Lamb Roganjosh. The tomato based rogan josh with pieces of lamb is my normal choice at Indian restaurants so I would have liked a bigger portion with a little more meat, but this isn't a plates overflowing with food kinda place, less is more so that you can focus on the array of carefully prepared Indian dishes.
• The chargrilled King Prawns were sliced in half and topped with a Kerala curry sauce.
• Lucknow Style Chicken Biryani. This was full of flavour and contained several large pieces of chicken. As expected with biryani you need to check through your portion for cloves and cardamon pods before eating if you don't want the taste explosion which comes from accidentally biting into these spices which infuse the rice.
• Then there were side dishes of the House black lentils, Burhani raita (a yoghurt based sauce), pilau rice and garlic naan.

Chargrilled prawns, lamb rogan josh, black lentils, pilau rice and naan

A chicken biryani in a small casserole dish

Each of the individual dishes were small and carefully presented, but it all adds up so when it was time for pudding (individual portions of ginger toffee pudding and cinnamon ice cream) I was already feeling full. The style of the dishes, especially the starters was an elegant tasting menu experience, but with multiple dishes coming at the same time. 

I would say the food was a medium spice level, I don't eat very spicy food and while the cumulative affect was a little hot at times, I wasn't sweating. A number of the dishes are served with a yoghurt based sauce so if you find any a bit hot you could add some to cool it. The hostess also mentioned that if people like particularly hot food they can increase the spice level. 

I enjoyed all of the dishes and it would be hard to choose an overall favourite. One of the great things is it included a number of choices I wouldn't have ordered myself because other dishes sounded more interesting or I didn't know what they were (the Green Pea Kachori Chaat would fall into this category), but there were nice surprises. It was a good balance of meat, seafood and vegetable dishes which all tasted different, but complimented each other. 

Pudding was ginger toffee pudding and cinnamon ice cream

Drinks at Cinnamon Kitchen 

To accompany the food Cinnamon Kitchen have a wide drinks menu (although if you fancy a lager they only have Cobra on draft and not many bottled options). We didn't spend long looking at the wine list because we didn't fancy wine, but felt the cocktails were definitely worth checking out. We had a Mango Sour and a Cinnamon Bellini. The Mango Sour was really nice, but the Cinnamon Bellini was a highlight of the meal for us both. The mix of Prosecco and cinnamon syrup was perfectly balanced creating an unusual, warming, but light drink. They also have a number of alcohol free aperitifs and I later enjoyed the Mango Sherbet which was a mix of mango juice with soda water elegantly topped with slices of mango.

The beautiful cinnamon bellini was a warming mix of prossecco and cinnamon syrup

About Cinnamon Kitchen

Located in the city I would expect that the restaurant and terrace get quite busy on weekdays. The main eating area is one large room which could easily become loud when full, however when we went on a Sunday lunchtime it was pretty quiet. There was a steady stream of diners, but lacked a little of the atmosphere you get with a fuller room. 

All the staff were friendly and attentive, more than happy to answer any of our questions and regularly checked if we needed anything.

Cinnamon Kitchen is the vision of Executive Chef Vivek Singh . It combines the best of Indian spices, but balanced for the British palate so the dishes aren't overwhelming spicy. The Cinnamon Kitchen City location is in Devonshire Square near Liverpool Street Station, with the entrance from an internal courtyard. The terrace area is undercover and looks like it wood have a good ambience in busy times, but no one was sitting outside when we visited. 

The entrance to Cinnamon Kitchen is from an internal courtyard in Devonshire Square

There is another Cinnamon Kitchen located south of the river at Battersea Power Station. Also in the Cinnamon group is the original Cinnamon Club which Vivek opened in 2001 in the old Westminster Library, the Cinnamon Bazaar in Covent Garden and Cinnamon Kitchen in Oxford.

If you like Indian food and want to head somewhere for a date night or special occasion to try some original concepts in a contemporary restaurant then it's worth checking the Cinnamon Group restaurants out. If you are looking for somewhere to eat more in central London then try these restaurants in Soho. 

We enjoyed a great combination of dishes as part of the 9 Dish Sharing Feast

This post is in collaboration with OpenTable, however the restaurant were unaware I would be reviewing the meal so I expect our experience to be typical of anyone visiting at a similar time. As always my review is an honest representation of my personal experience.