Fusion confusion at Chula

10 April 2012

This review was published in June 2001

In the unlikely event that the maxim "faites simple" came up during planning meetings, the team behind Chula must have decided to ignore it. Chula is a new "Bar Restaurant and Cafe" with a frontage proclaiming Indian Fusion and Curry Out, which opened in May 2000, and their motto is "faites difficile".

Perhaps they reckoned that to stand out among the host of Indian establishments on Hammersmith's Curry Gulch they would have to do something a bit different; or perhaps the allure of the strange has won them over. Either way, this is an Indian restaurant that has espoused novelty for its own sake. The decor is very bright.

The chairs are very modern (or you can put your shoes in a tableside locker and sit bare-foot and cross-legged on cushions in a booth). The lighting changes constantly so that one minute all has a greenish tinge and the next everything is red - imagine being trapped at the traffic lights throughout dinner. You could live with this resto-design thrill-seeking if the food was outstanding, but it's not. Dishes are as complicated and hit and miss as the decor.

Starters include black spiced chicken (small knobbly chunks of tikkaish chicken with charcoal-flavoured extremities); some small and rather good samosas; and spicy crab - it's hard to know what to say about the spicy crab, which is presented as a khaki-coloured pile of sludge. Take a forkful and if you close you eyes and concentrate hard you might just imagine the faintest taste of fish paste and a whiff of curry leaf.

As you read the list of tandoor dishes your eye may be drawn to the Cheddar chicken tikka. The chicken tikka is nicely cooked, and then topped with molten, catering cheddar, resulting in horrid cheese and even more horrid chicken. Chicken Chettinad is a famous and much-loved dish - plenty of hot chillies, plus black peppercorns, cumin, fennel seeds, ginger.

At Chula you get lamb Chettinad, a clove-infused lamb curry that soft-pedals the chilli. In contrast prawn peri peri brings a fierce hot red gravy with flabby, overcooked prawns lurking in its soupy depths. The Parsee lamb curry is a rich, fruity, and pretty good dish.

Breads are not bad until you choose the cheese-and-onion nan, which is every bit as nasty as it sounds. (Whatever next, salt-and-vinegar nan? Prawn cocktail nan? Hedgehog nan?). Crispy okra strips are tasty - rather like the classic bhindi Jaipuri but without the delicious belt of sour dried-mango powder.

What is saddening is the realisation that all these innovations, and all these ill-conceived "fusion" recipes, must be the result of careful planning, because unless badly in need of a tax loss, no one opens a new restaurant hellbent on failure. Several weeks into the project the management at Chula probably still hopes that its food is different enough, and exciting enough, to pack the place. The restaurant business is not a simple one, but perhaps it should be.

Chula
King Street, London, W6 0QP

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