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The Cinnamon Club (∗∗∗)

Address:The Old Westminster Library, 30-32 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BU
Tel:020 7222 2555
Email:
Website: Visit The Cinnamon Club website
Price: £57.00Wine: £21.00 Champagne: £67.00
Opening Hours:Mon-Fri 7.30-9.30am Mon-Sat 12N-2.30pm 5.30-10.45pm

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The Victorian gothic opulence of the Old Westminster Library makes a grand backdrop for the Cinnamon Club’s thrilling new-wave Indian cuisine: Vivek Singh cleverly fuses European ingredients & classical technique with Indian spicing, producing multilayered flavours & dishes strong on texture & presentation. The kitchen provides sublime sustenance from breakfast to six-course tasting menus, with numerous possibilities in between. A lunch starter of stir-fried crab with roasted coconut & spices exhibited perfect balance & delicacy, while Bombay spiced vegetables with cumin ‘pao’ bread packed a terrific flavour punch. To follow, green-spiced barramundi steamed in banana leaf was subtle & moist, before a dessert of Bramley apple crumble with apple samosa sealed a happy Anglo-Indian partnership. MPs & apparatchiks surreptitiously lavish their expenses here. Despite the odd quibble about prices & slow service, this remains a great restaurant that’s always busy: the hum of civilised contentment says it all.

Wine List: An innovative list packed with bottles suited to the cuisine – juicy reds, fragrant whites & a nice choice by the glass. The £35-50 bracket has been beefed up, with more Grenache from Southern Rhône & Pinot Noir from New Zealand, & Sauvignons, Chenins & Rieslings from South Africa & Australia. Best Buy White 2008 Semillon/Sauvignon, Vasse Felix, Margaret River, Western Australia, £43. Best Buy Red 2005 Grenache, Domaine Gigondan, Côtes du Rhône Villages, France, £42.

Chef: Vivek Singh

The Cinnamon Club’s Chef - The Cinnamon Club chef Vivek Singh

Vivek Singh shocked his family when he rebuffed expectations to become an engineer & instead announced that he wanted to become a chef. After graduating from college, he joined the Oberoi Hotel group, first working at their flight kitchens in Mumbai. He later moved to the Grand Hotel in Calcutta & then the Oberoi's flagship Rajvilas, in Jaipur. Singh had been reading Escoffier from an early age & at Rajvilas devoured books by Marco Pierre White & Charlie Trotter. He got the opportunity to come to work in the UK when the Cinnamon Club opened in 2001. Since then, Singh has written two books, the Cinnamon Club Cookbook & the Cinnamon Club Seafood Cookbook.

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Reader reviews of The Cinnamon Club:

Gmbklm
Gold Reviewer

Gmbklm ( 40s, Male, United Kingdom )

Our first visit for a couple of years, and we were quickly reminded why we hadn’t rushed back. On arriving, the front desk had lost our reservation, and weren’t exactly over apologetic; ie it was clearly our fault. However, it was relatively quickly resolved by someone with a little more experience and tact, and a table found.

The Cinnamon Club attracts a mixed but slightly odd London crowd of Eurotrash, “special night outers”, politicos and associated PR / hangers on. Despite this, the atmosphere was quite pleasant, and certainly very buzzy, which we liked. They clearly do a roaring trade.

Some clearly don’t like it, but we thought that the ex-library décor and furnishing was very warm and pleasant, and a bit clubby but in a very nice way. However, we weren’t so keen on the modern bar downstairs. We really liked the upstairs bar, although service could have been better.

The food is PR’d and priced as very sophisticated, refined high end Indian. We felt that most of our dishes were quite mediocre, and lacked either real quality or excitement. The baby squid starter was fine, although a bit cold when delivered, and the… More

Sunday, 14 Mar 2010
Overall:6
Food and Drink:7
Service:7
Atmosphere:7
Value for Money:4
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Tess G.

Tess G. ( Female )

I write for a blog on Food and Health and enjoyed the pleasure of dining at The Cinnamon Club for an article. A truly incredible dining experience and one of the best takes on Indian Cuisine in London. For a calorie count of what we ate and the full blog review you can visit Foodhealthblog.com A Crab salad starter with cubes of the most perfect cured salmon was a real winner. The Old Westminster Library a great venue to house a restaurant in!

1 February 2010
Overall:9
Food and Drink:9
Service:9
Atmosphere:9
Value for Money:9
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Darren B.
Reviews: 1

Darren B. ( 40s, Male, United Kingdom )

Whilst the food was fantastic, the room is so big that it's incredibly noisy and cold. The service was painfully slow starting with a five minute wait in the bar turining into forty minutes! At the bar it was also nearly impossible to be served. It's a shame that such delicately flavoured and precicely presented food is spoilt by such bad service and atmosphere.

26 October 2009
Overall:2
Food and Drink:9
Service:1
Atmosphere:1
Value for Money:4
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Food fiend
Gold Reviewer

Food fiend ( 30s, Female, United Kingdom )

Editor's pick

The Cinnamon Club is as excellent as i've heard – i went here for a birthday lunch on a Saturday and it was near empty. The decor is as you may expect from an old library! Very quiet, very old and probably in need of a bit of music – but the food…!

I started with mutton kebabs – perfectly seasoned and mouthwateringly so. My main was part of the set menu and was simply Old Delhi Chicken Thigh Curry and rice – we ordered sides of raitha and nan (nothing amazing). My sister started with crab risotto which she loved and only picked as crab was her favourite – it wasnt very ‘asian’ but she still gobbled in all up – her main was king prawns and rice. We finished with lemon and coriander cake and i had a variation on chocolate mousse and sorbets. The choices dont sound much but it's hard to convey how everything was just so well cooked and seasoned that even the simplest things tasted delicious. I didnt want my meal to end!!! This was GOOD FOOD and not a place where you felt really stuffed to a T – was ‘just right’.

Service was perfect and friendly – we didnt feel at all out of place, just very welcomed.

Overall the bill came to… More

13 July 2009
Overall:9
Food and Drink:10
Service:9
Atmosphere:6
Value for Money:9
2 of 3 people found this review helpful. Was it helpful to you?
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Paul A.
Reviews: 1

Paul A. ( 30s, Male )

Date: Friday 9 August 2008

In the red corner – A new Hyderabadi dish claiming to be the hottest curry in the world. Sparring partners are minced lamb, taramind sauce, kashmiri powder…and a parade of chillies so nails they look like the police lineup after a raid on a vegatable crime family. Trainer: Vivek Singh, chief chef.

In the blue corner – Slightly sweaty 30-something, a Bellini and three flutes of champagne down. Undefeated, but has fought mainly local journeymen, including the Bengal Lancer's Kalapuri chicken. Trainer: Nicole

Build up

The dish was commissioned by Virgin as part of a stunt to acommpany the launch of Virgin's Bollywood TV channel. Singh's brief was to try and enter the Guinness Book of World Records for producing a curry that could be recognised as the hottest in the world.

Curiously, Virgin's involvement seems to have figured little in the ensuing publicity, which has included press reports and an appearance on Jonathan Ross, where the host braved the dish wearing fire-proof goggles.

Let's get ready to rumble

At this stage I had no idea whether the Burner was the hottest collection of… More

12 May 2009
Overall:8
Food and Drink:6
Service:7
Atmosphere:7
Value for Money:6
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Louis M.
Gold Reviewer

Louis M. ( 30s, Male, United Kingdom )

A wonderful feast of excellent food added to by excellent service.

Expensive but worth it for a memorable experience.

The library setting giving a pleasing Westminster feel.

March 2009
Overall:9
Food and Drink:9
Service:9
Atmosphere:8
Value for Money:8
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Edward P.
Reviews: 1

Edward P. ( 20s, Male, United Kingdom )

“It's a bit too much like a library in there” is what some say when describing a venue lacking in atmosphere. “It used to be a library in there” could be a fitting way to note the slightly staid formality that hangs in the air of The Cinnamon Club. Remember, this is the MPs' favourite, and it's adorned with a relic of its past – an austere looking old-fashioned bookshelf, which lines the back wall. The ambience is largely a sum of these parts: relics, MPs, old-fashioned, austere. But enough about that, because a restaurant should be judged mainly on its food – and it's here The Cinnamon Club scores highly.
Flavours are subtle, perhaps too subtle for some diners, and well presented. Beef kebab is garnished with beautifully executed coriander paste, offset with star anise flavoured gel and arranged on the plate with a geometric precision. A main of tandoori guinea fowl and dhal was aromatic and demonstrated a deftness of flavouring a world away from posturing curry houses – but perhaps lacked true wow factor. Some believe Indian restaurants aren't a great place for desserts – if this is the case, and I can see the argument… More

March 2009
Overall:7
Food and Drink:8
Service:7
Atmosphere:4
Value for Money:6
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P555nat

P555nat ( London )

My husband and I went here for dinner on a Saturday night , with its 3 star rating from Square meal our expectations were high. We arrived early to have a drink in the bar and were told someone would come and get us once our table was ready. After asking twice whether anyone was coming, I went upstairs to find out and was told our table was ready and they were waiting for us! Not the end of the world, so we were seated and chose the tasting menu with matching wines, wanting to get the whole experience. The service was slow and gaps between coarses was lengthy and a couple of time were brought the wrong wine. The food was ok, but each coarse very strong and very hot and there was a total of 6, yes 6 savory coarses! By the time the Wagwu beef we chosen arrived we were fairly full but expectations high, the sauce with the beef was quiet unpleasent and neither of us couldn't eat the rest. In choosing the beef we were charged an extra £25 each for the already £115 each tasting menu. Overall the experience was very disappointing and for the price (over £300 inc cocktails) was not worth it.

March 2009
Overall:5
Food and Drink:4
Service:4
Atmosphere:4
Value for Money:4
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SD R.
Reviews: 1

SD R. ( 30s, Female )

While the food at Cinnamon Club was of a high standard, the restaurant thought fit to put us in a freezing side room which completely ruined the experience. Initially we were placed in a corner which served as a storage space and was next to a window with a strong draft. When we asked to move we were still placed at a table in the same cold room with a tiny blow heater to warm the corner but the silly blow heater wouldn't work consistently so we still had to wrap up in shawls. It was ridiculous to be struggling with a blow heater at such a posh restaurant and while the service was otherwise good, the staff completely ignored the fact that we were putting multiple sweaters and shawls on and I even wore my coat, plus we were clearly struggling with the heater. It was completely ridiculous and no one offered us a better table. The side room emptied out by 10 as it is a sort of overflow room and though the main room was still filled with people, we were sitting there alone in the freezing side room, which wasn't particularly atmospheric. Plus the vegetarian options are limited for the vegetarian in our party, and the veggie dish… More

December 2008
Overall:1
Food and Drink:7
Service:5
Atmosphere:3
Value for Money:1
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