Mooli’s opened nearly two years ago on Frith Street in Soho, one of London’s busiest restaurant areas. Born out of a passion and a pining for good Indian street food, founders Sam and Mathew traveled around India for months for recipe inspiration.

I live in an area with a large Indian community and while fantastic authentic food is plentiful at cheap restaurants nearby, I have noticed that these are somewhat lacking in Central London. The only other good value (and by this I mean cheap) Indian restaurant (apart from Mooli’s) that I could recommend is Dishoom, who, by the way, has a pop up restaurant on the Southbank this summer.

However, Mooli’s isn’t your typical curry house. They serve a range of Indian wraps, which they call Mooli’s. Also on the menu are a fantastic range of side dishes, plus delicious lassi. They even have an alcohol license so you can enjoy a nice cold bottle of beer or a crisp glass of wine with your dinner, or lunch if you like that kind of thing. All food is freshly made on site – even the bread in a machine that they call their ‘Moolita’, which is basically a roti making machine. It is fired up every morning to create fresh, delicious roti breads that do not contain any nasties.

I have dined at Mooli’s many times and recommended it to many friends but last week I was invited to try their new menu, which was created to reflect the recent spate of sunshine that we have been having and celebrate the warm (hopefully) months ahead.

It’s a good job that I turned up hungry. I was greeted by Mathew who told me that he wanted me to try everything. So I sat down on my own and was stared at by the lunch customers behind me queuing to get their lunch time fix. On my tray was a mini pork Mooli (this is not new but is my favourite so Mathew threw one into the mix), a new chicken Mooli, a superfood salad, cool cucumber Raita, a superfood salad and a rose and cinnamon lassi.

The new chicken Mooli was delicious. The chicken is cooked with herby and aromatic fenugreek leaves and lentils. I particularly enjoted the crunchy pickled turnips. All of this is joined by a tangy and cooling yoghurt raita. This is replacement for the old chicken Mooli and although I never tried to old one, I’m hoping this one is around to stay.

I was also lucky enough to get a portion of the aloo papdi chaat, which isn’t usually available until after 3pm. I love potato curries so this dish went down very well, even more so because it contained chick peas. This is a slight change from their old potato and chick pea side and is topped off with crisp papdi and ruby red pomegranate seeds.

Also on the side was the cooling cucumber raita. Now, I don’t think that any of Mooli’s dishes are too spicy so I didn’t exactly NEED the raita. But want and need are two different things and I definitely wanted it. Cucumber is one of my favourite foods (I have taken a stick and peeled it with a knife in my hand to eat it as a snack for as long as I can remember) and teamed with yoghurt makes for a cooling, refreshing side dish.

The rose and cinnamon lassi was utterly delicious. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t finish it off due to the amount of food on my tray. I am not one to EVER leave food on my plate so was disappointed when I took my last mouthful – the food had defeated me.

I love this place. It has great food at fantastic prices, a good array of music blares out and every customer looks as though they are thoroughly enjoying what they are putting in their mouths.

Mooli’s
50 Frith Street
London
W1D 4SQ