I’ve read a lot about Roti Chai over the past few weeks and everything I’ve read so far has been positive. Timeout recently described the restaurant as a place ‘laden with nostalgia appealing to wistful Indians’ and others have awarded it four and some even five stars. I felt it was my duty to check this place out and give it some of the Man Eats London treatment.
Roti Chai is a relaxed, informal restaurant that specialises in snacky, street food. Nestled in a quiet side street off Oxford Street it’s ideally located for a quick pit stop during shopping or an impromptu dinner. The decor as well gives it a cafe style feel in a far less contrived way than other Indian restaurants like Dishoom for example.
The menu is dominated by snack dishes such as bhel puri, dhokla, papri chaat and samosas. If you’re expecting a massive menu with lots of choice prepare to be disappointed as Roti Chai’s menu only fits an A4 sheet of paper. It does however contain a Road & Rail section which contains diverse Indian dishes such as Maacher Jhol (fish curry) and Railway Lamb Curry but once again it only has 6 choices.
The bhel puri was reasonably good, the chicken lollipops were truly Indian in that they had virtually no meat on them and the dhokla was far too soggy. The payasam was however very creamy and very moreish.
Roti Chai is in its restaurant infancy right now and I expect the menu to expand as the restaurant does – it also has a bar downstairs which I expect will become a venue in its own right.
It’s definitely a place I’ll come back to in the future and given that it’s a stone’s throw away from Oxford Street it’ll do very well. It was also very reasonably priced at about £12 per head. I’d give it 3 stars and will definitely go back.
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