The Kricket team has come in with another strong pitch.
They’ve opened up a fourth branch of their innovative & widely acclaimed Anglo-Indian small plates concept – this time in Canary Wharf. You’ll find it slinking beneath the railway tracks leading into the DLR station, opposite Blacklock, in a concrete bunker branded with a giant, neon-lit K.
Step inside, and you’ll be struck by the dining counter running the full length of the space, covered in chilli-red tiling and illuminated by soft, spherical table lights. The whole thing looks like some beautiful, futuristic Hopper painting. It separates the open kitchen, with its glinting steel, from the rest of the restaurant, which is given a thoroughly convivial feel with communal tables and colourful hanging gauze, serving to carve the room into more intimate, semi-private areas.
Rebecca Hope Photography
With plans for a fifth restaurant opening in Shoreditch this Autumn, it’s all an impressive step up for the burgeoning restaurant powerhouse, which started life in a Brixton shipping container and has swiftly climbed up the culinary ladder rung-by-rung, opening one of Soho’s most alluring restaurants as well as a hugely popular space in White City, and now a home in the city’s financial epicentre. Not bad going.
The menu – which is all designed to be shared – is a smart blend of the classics that made Kricket so popular in the first place, as well as some intriguing newness.
Over in the former corner there’s Kricket’s famous crispy samphire pakoras drizzled with tamarind, and the moreish Keralan fried chicken with a curry leaf mayo dip. But in the latter there are some modern classics in the making, too: a special mention goes to the mushroom keema, which infuses the flavours of the dish usually made with lamb into a veggie-friendly version topped with lightly charred cauliflower mushrooms.
Rebecca Hope Photography
There’s appetising snacks in the form of pani puri smuggling a pool of fresh tomato, and beef idichathu, which is served on a shiso leaf that you can wrap up into one highly fragrant bitesized parcel. Larger dishes from the tandoor include mouthwatering baida rotis – handkerchief-thin bread wrapped around rabbit keema and fried in ghee; while blow-out sharers include a verdant green mutton chop & pistachio korma. And to finish? A slim slice of chai financier cake, with a dollop of elderflower cream and black cherries.
On the drinks side of the equation, there’s a sizeable wine list full of spice-friendly drinking partners (with decently-priced by-the-glass options); a couple of lagers and IPAs; and a handful of signature Kricket cocktails like the Sparkling Laal, with Döppelgänger aperitif (made over in Battersea), apricot, carom & soda.
Rebecca Hope Photography
And if that whets your appetite? Search out the hidden door at the back of the restaurant, and slip into SOMA, the second incarnation of Kricket’s spin-off cocktail bar that’s already been so popular in Soho. Here you’ll find an extended list of unique concoctions like the Orange, a twist on the lassi with molasses-heavy Dark Drop Rum, orange yoghurt, amaretto and mint. Just don’t have too many…
…they’ll knock you for six.
NOTE: Kricket Canary Wharf is open Monday – Saturday. You can find out more, and make a booking, at the Kricket website.
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Kricket Canary Wharf | Frobisher Passage, London, E14 4EE
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