the UK Restaurant and Hotel Zine


Quilon - a very elegant new South Indian restaurant in SW1

I hadn't realised how sketchy my Indian geography was until I tried to find the town Quilon in my Philips School Atlas (still a useful reference standby even if it somewhat wistfully continued to colour former British colonial territories in pink long after independence)!

There was Quilon, in the province of Kerala, right down near the southernmost tip of India, just to the left, facing the Indian Ocean. Its position is important, as the coastal cuisine of Kerala makes great use of fish, which has never been much of a feature in the more typical neighbourhood British Indian restaurants, which are mainly operated by Bangladeshis from the north of the sub-continent. Outside a handful of special Indian restaurants, our experience of "Indian" fish dishes has been largely restricted to prawn massala, sag prawn (prawn with spinach), Madras prawn, and for the really culinarily challenged, that most macho of all curries, prawn Vindaloo, washed down with half a dozen pints of lager, yeah.

Another bit of good news is that Quilon's fish suppliers are Cutty's who are part of the Bank, Fish! and Zander group, renowned for the freshest fish in town.

Quilon has taken over the former site of one of Dine Online's old favourites, the Auberge de Provence. But talk about a stunning makeover - the old place has been totally transformed. L'Auberge, for all its retro Gallic charm, was more like a seventies Trattoria. The new restaurant is the epitome of elegance, with beautiful floors, bright colours, fine murals by Michael Alford depicting scenes from Kerala and show cases with cleverly lit Indian objets d'art.

The staff are multi-national - and at the launch dinner party they were professional, friendly and keen. The chef is A. V. Sriram - the V.S. Naipaul of the stoves, who is widely regarded as one of India's top chefs. His menu looks very enticing, starters run out at around a fiver, mains are mostly in the region of ten to twelve pounds, vegetable dishes also cost a fiver, while rice and accompaniments are only a couple of pounds each. The menus themselves have been rather beautifully designed and printed, so with luck the prices won't suddenly hike up only a month after opening - one of the less appealing attributes of so many new restaurants.

I tried a number of dishes, mostly fishy, and they were very good, especially the fish cooked in banana leaves. But this was a launch party, so we shall wait until the place has settled down for a couple of weeks before reviewing it properly.

All the signs are that Quilon is set to make its mark on the smart restaurant scene.
Clifford Mould, September 1999

Click here for a September 2000 update by Dine Online's reporter Deepak Sharma


Quilon, 41 Buckingham Gate, SW1 6AF
Tel: 020 7821 1899 Closed Sunday

Location: Next to the St James's Court Hotel, just off Victoria Street, midway between Victoria Station and Parliament Square.


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Dine Online Copyright Clifton Media Associates September 1999, All rights reserved.

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