The all-new Elephant and Castle contains conflicting multitudes. What once was a mass of unkempt buildings and traffic-snarled gyratory roads — much of my early life seemed to involve peering out at the baffling, reflective bulk of its massive roundabout from the back of our Datsun Cherry — is now the glossy, contentiously reconfigured site of one of the city’s longest and bitterest gentrification battles.
The brutalist Heygate Estate and the Fifties-era shopping centre have both been razed despite sustained local opposition. Elephant Park, a £2.5 billion property developer-owned sprawl of landscaped greenery, schmancy hospitality businesses and expensive housing, has sprung up to ostensibly replace both.
On the one hand, it looks like a familiar case of charmingly scraggy working-class community spaces being bulldozed in favour of money and corporatised soullessness. But on the other, if you have actually been to Elephant Park — if you have walked its impressively wild central oasis, nipped into the unexpected array of varied places to eat (Ecuadorian cafes, Ethiopian institutions, TikTok-famous Pan-Asian canteens), or experienced the joyous water pistol-firing bedlam of its splash park on a heatwave day — then you will know that this is only half the story.
Elephant Park has, for some time, been my problematic fave; an ersatz, Truman Show neighbourhood that crackles with defiant life and seduces even as it slightly unnerves. And now, to further complicate things, here is Kachori: a brand new Indian restaurant of impeccable pedigree, thrusting ambition and pyrotechnic flavours that feels especially significant in an area that most outside of south London know as, well, just a massive roundabout. Needless to say, it marks an elephantine step forward for an already hugely underrated dining spot.
Though, again, the calibre of the team involved means this outcome is perhaps not a total surprise. Kachori, which is named after the fryer-puffed, Rajasthani dough parcel, is the joint brainchild of restaurateurs Sorowar Khan and Humayun Hussain (of Borough’s Mango and west country hit Bandook respectively).
Brinder Narula, former head chef at Michelin-starred Gymkhana and Benares, is in charge of the food. If this all sounds like an absurd amount of creative horsepower for what is essentially an untested concept in a new-build unit then that’s because it absolutely is. Without wishing to disparage Kachori’s near neighbours, to clock its expensively appointed space — a chic, 132-cover behemoth with textured pale pink walls, plush booths covered with gauzy canopies, a glinting jewel box bar and a capacious terrace — among the likes of Cheeky Chicos and 400 Rabbits pizzeria feels almost laughably incongruous; a little like spotting prime Usain Bolt lining up for the dads’ race at sports day.
Next to its neighbours, Kachori is laughingly incongruous, like spotting Usain Bolt line up for the dads’ race on sports day
First out from our vast A3 card menus were sticky chicken wings: luscious, fat boomerangs of poultry flavoured as much by the vigorous char of the tandoor as their finger-coating, masala-ish glaze. Deep-fried curls of corn rib were sprinkled in Jodhpur podi, a dry spice rub with an elusive, nutty sourness. And as we breezed towards the mains and sides — barbecued salmon in a boisterous green chilli and lime leaf pesto, spoonably tender lamb shank nihari in a richer-than-Zuckerberg sauce, mixed mushroom sabji with a ringing charge of ginger — we steadily climbed towards a kind of rugged, high summer flavour nirvana.
Could you argue that the menu is overlong to the point that it slightly overwhelms? Or that the eponymous raj kachori — a crackable cricket ball of lentil-enriched dough, spilling sprouted mung beans and a messy riot of other chaat-style fixings — was very slightly hampered by its fridge-cold sweet potato filling? You could. However, by the time we shared a clever, creamy masala chai creme brûlée, we were mostly still marvelling at the fact that food of such boundless potency and imagination, and such unexpectedly affordable not-London prices, had managed to emerge here of all places.
Kachori basically makes no sense. But, like the still-coalescing riddle of the new Elephant, that might just be what makes it so thrillingly compelling.
