Kokum is a fruit that’s used like tamarind in southern Indian cooking to add sour, fruity, salty depth to curries and to lend punch to coconutty veggie dishes. Kokum is also the name of a modern Indian restaurant on East Dulwich Road in south-east London that, like all contemporary subcontinental restaurants, has a tightrope to walk: they’re brimming with ambition and a need for authenticity, while at the same time having to cater to a neighbourhood clientele.
Kokum the restaurant offers uthappam rice pancakes, fish koliwada and beef short rib stewed nihari-style, and aims to explore different culinary corners of this vast country while also being aware of the need to list at least one chicken dish in a tomatoey sauce on the mains so as not to scare the horses. New openings such as this want their decor to be chic, semi-industrial and never cosy or chintzy, and to offer complex cocktails spiced with chai and cayenne, but know they run the risk that locals may come to visit once, deem the place “a bit trendy” and never return. The other dilemma is that this kind of authenticity doesn’t come cheap: that nihari short rib contains saffron and kewra, and the boozy Kalcutta cosmos feature roasted fenugreek syrup. “Eleven pounds fifty for a raan uthappam!?” some will shriek, overlooking that this stew of kid lamb is simmered for 12 hours and served with homemade coconut chutney.
