Indian Mischief in East Dulwich - Jan 2011

Where: Indian Mischief, Lordship Lane, East Dulwich
How much: £20 a head including drinks and desserts
Come here: if you're on a classy curry night in South East London and can't get into Ganapati. It's not one for post beer sustenance but is something light, vegetarian and different to the standard Lordship Lane curry houses. 


I'll immediately caveat this with a note that the restaurant has just opened, but it's worth knowing that they're still finding their feet, certainly front of house if not in the kitchen. They've taken over the space on Lordship Lane previously occupied by generic Chinglish Chopstix, and I do hope that they're more successful. The team behind woefully named Indian Mischief have at least sought to strike out from the more generic curry houses that litter Lordship Lane.

It's a small, thin space, with white modern furniture (unchanged drastically from the previous occupants) and a long bar occupying most of the room. It's unlike many other spaces, and too antiseptic to be that appealing. The faux candles don't inspire a mood, drowned out as they are by the strip lights. There's definitely a sense of effort here however, the cutlery and crockery and the artful layout of the food point at someone who's keen not to be seen as one of the crowd.

It's a rare menu too. The fully vegetarian cuisine (certified by the Vegetarian Society) and the farsan, or side dishes served with everything, led me towards Gujurat, a province in the North West of India hailed by seminal cookery writer and chef Madhur Jaffrey has termed as "the haute cuisine of vegetarianism", promising. However the predominance of rolled dosa (thin stuffed savoury pancakes) is more of a Southern Indian thing. Either way, there are some really interesting dishes that you won't have seen before. We started with acceptable samosas and lovely fresh lentil doughnuts or Vada, another South Indian speciality, served with a number of artful accompanying splodges, all but one unidentifiable to our affable (and very new) waiter. Friendly and enthusiastic as he was, he felt more like a friend of the owner than staff. 

We split two mains, a cashew nut Mahlabhari curry (not something I've ever heard of before) and one of the special dosas, rolled and stuffed with a spinach mix. The cashew blend was pleasant, creamy and with sufficient bite. Aromatically flavoured, if not particularly highly spiced. It arrived with a portion of rice and a side of diced onion and tomato. The dosa was exceptional. Well prepared, nicely spiced and with a moreish spinach filling, it came with a yoghurt sauce and further helpings of the artful splodges, identified by us now as 'brown' - a spicy mix probably containing tamarind, and 'grainy brown' - not tasting of much, but with a grainy texture. If there are any experts out there who could identify, I'd be interested in knowing what they are. 


Desserts and coffees were as expected, neither a carrot halwa or a cardamon coffee were worth writing home about, though I was pleased to see some good Indian beers on the menu and a range of lassi. The wine list is short and perfunctory, with nothing topping £20. 


Overall, it's an interesting option, though not somewhere I'd go out of my way for. By the looks of it, they do takeaway, so it might be an option for a healthy dinner in the future, though I'm not sure how the dosas and those lovely fresh doughnuts will transport.