Golden Lounge, Keg & Grill and Sun and Sand
Time to look past the mixy. Here's the three best vegetarian dishes I've found on my travels in Leicester, Birmingham and London
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Like a lot of desi pub goers I love a mixed grill. I’m a real sucker for the tandoori wings especially if they’re heavily charred, jet black and hot (chilli wise). I also love the mixy’s bed of onions they lay on, the lemon juice - which gives it the smoke - and the many competing flavours of The Stack. I also relish the theatre when they’re brought through a crowded pub with people stopping conversations to see these sizzling platters.
The success of the mixed grill is inextricably interwoven with the rise of British-Indian boozers, particularly ones based in the Midlands. And this is a story of meat lovers indulging themselves while watching football or meeting family.
It's communal eating that’s the best of this country and of India. The mixed grill is a great example of a post-colonial, post-racism success - of how two cultures (India’s spice and heat and Britain’s European meat-heavy diet) can be fused to fashion something wonderful.
“A mixed grill,” Sejal Sukhadwala, food writer and author of The Philosophy of Curry says. “Is a British concept. It comes from a mixed grill in Britain where you’d have lamb chops, sausages and chips. And this is an Indian adaptation of an English mixed grill.”
But there’s a lot more to desi pubs than mixed grills and Indian food due to its vastness in regions, delicacies and different dishes. If you’re prepared to think past marinated meats, desi pubs have a lot to offer and a lot to recommend, even if you want to be indulgent. Especially because in certain bars these dishes have been put together with a lot of care and attention with non-meat eating owners who have customers who are culturally vegetarian.
Vegans are catered for too but - depending on your strict adherence - it’s worth checking to see whether they’ve cooked on a separate tandoor to the meat and dairy. Nowadays a lot of pubs - especially the bigger venues - have different apparatus etc, but the popularity of meat dishes, such as the mixed grill, mean this isn’t always the case. And a big disclaimer: I can’t say for certain if the dishes I mention are vegan.
The Golden Lounge (Leicester) - Dal Makhni
There’s only one major entry in my book for Leicester. There’s a lot of desi pubs there and it has a rich history, including what could be the first in the country - the Oxdown, now run by a Gujurti landlord after being Singh-owned since the 1960s. (Interestingly, the coverage of when it became ‘Britain’s first desi pub’ in 1962 focused on the publican’s white wife - which makes me wonder if this was the only way the licence was begrudgingly given).
I only featured one pub in Leicester because I was looking for a place that was unique and had a gripping narrative. What I wasn’t expecting was to find a desi pub/bar/club that people travelled to visit from all round the country because it was so out of the ordinary. The Golden Lounge (formerly the Golden Tumeric) is based above a jewellers in Leicester’s Golden Mile (hence the name) and opened recently without any publicity.
The manager admitted the marketing was all word of mouth but the key selling point was that they were Indians opening a modern Indian-style bar in Leicester and this sets it apart from all the desi pubs in my book. The almost 100% desi clientele were here for the modern music - usually these events are based on songs from the past, the desi nostalgia - and, crucially for us, the modern adaptations of classic dishes.
How good is the dal makhni here? It’s about eight naans good: I couldn’t stop ordering (bullets, filled with green chillies) as the sauce was so rich, so spicy and so hot - a different type of heat to the bullet naan chillies, more secondary on the pallet - that I needed to keep mopping it up.
It might not even be the best vegetarian dish on the menu as egg curries are what a lot of desis drive up from London for. I say “might” because I can’t try them as I’m intolerant to eggs. I’m particularly regretful of this because here they serve an egg equivalent to a mixed grill - honestly I'd really like to see a photo of this if anyone fancies going to order one!
“I love eggs,” Shivam Sharma, the manager, says. “Gujarat cooks can make 150-200 dishes from the eggs. The Masala eggs sizzler is most like this style of cooking.”
Keg and Grill (Birmingham) - Veggie Mixed Grill
The Keg and Grill is (in)famous for being cricketer Michael Vaughan’s favourite desi pub, according to a local paper I read. I didn’t mention this factoid in my book because I didn’t want to link someone who has behaved like he has to a book celebrating the best of desi culture. There was a time I loved Vaughan and even ran round my living room when he did this to Sachin Tendulkar.
Maybe the joke’s on him as the Keg in the title - I’m told - isn’t named after a barrel but the way Indians use it to mean ‘glass’. (I feel as a desi who supports England - and loves its British-Asian players - that Vaughan and his ilk deserve heaps of criticism.)
Back to the pub which is worth recommending as it expertly serves a lot of mixed grills to all types of customers, particularly sports fans. It’s on the same road as the Craven Arms, which I featured last week, and in a part of Birmingham with good transport links enabling people travelling to stadiums to pop in for a mixy before their match.
The want to recreate a mixy’s theatre for vegetarians - switch off the smoke alarms! - must’ve been strong at the Keg as they have come up with substitutions for nearly all of the meat fest. Out with the prawn pakoras, shish kebabs and wings - in with flattened bhajis, soya tikka, sizzling samosas and spicy mushrooms cooked on the tandoor.
“You have to adapt,” Landlord Gurmit (Gee) Bansal says. “To everyone’s tastes. It can’t just be meat, meat, meat. The veggie platter is very popular. Not everyone caters for vegetarians but if you look at our reviews [online] they speak for themselves.”
Sun and Sand Lounge (Finchley, North London) - Mock Chicken
As I mentioned when I spoke about the Century and the Purple Flame, London has a long tradition of Gujarti desi pubs that opened as clubs serving a clientele who either couldn’t be served or weren’t welcome in mainstream pubs. Because of this they had a black frontage and the neighbours at the Sun and Sand thought this was a strip club rather than a community pub.
Publican Haree Patel’s parents were from East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) and so was the previous owner which is shown in the spicing and dishes on offer. But The non-meat choices are particularly put together with a lot of thought because Patel himself is a vegetarian: “I concentrate quite a lot on the vegetarian menu,” he says. “People always say you’ve got a nice, extensive vegetarian menu.
“When I was young, all my friends ate meat. When we went out it was sometimes a struggle to find something. It was a bit of a challenge. But now this menu is great.”
I think a lot of vegetarians struggle with “mock meats” because they are too fleshy, too fake especially if these diners have been non-meat eaters for a while. Here the mock ‘not chicken’ Karahi (marinated soya pieces in a sauce) didn’t have a fake meat texture and was more like paneer or tofu. Any meat eater would love this and maybe it’s called “mock chicken” ironically as it’s impossible to denigrate a dish this great.