A very superior "beer and a curry"

It would be wrong not to acknowledge that it is National Curry Week. So I will share with you the story of some fine curry I had at Hop and Spice in Balham – not Indian but the Sri Lankan variety.

I love Sri Lankan food – I only wish it was more widely available, although to be fair it is infinitely more available in London than it was in Norfolk. There are around 20 Sri Lankan restaurants in London, mostly in the south and west.

Hop and Spice is unusual on two counts. It serves curry tapas-style – the idea is that you order a selection of small dishes. And it has a wide range of beers, as well as suggestions for matching beers and curries. I particularly like this – I would rather drink interesting English ale than Tiger or other bland lager any day.

One effect of this is that you pay a bit more than you might expect. You are advised to order six dishes between two, each priced from £3.95 to £5.55, plus rice or bread (plain steamed rice is £3.10). So you are looking at a minimum of £15 per person for a main course, based on three curries and one rice. If you don’t want to do the tapas-style thing, you can order a main-course style dish, priced £14.45 to £16.80, which includes rice and raita. Bottled beers start at £3.95, while bottle-conditioned beers are over £5 - £5.45 for Hopback Summer Lightning (5pc). I know that bottle-conditioned beers have a shorter shelf-life, but this strikes me as a touch steep. Having said that, they do an offer with Tastecard which makes the food pretty reasonable.

Not all the food is exactly as you would find it in Sri Lanka – some of the fieriness has been toned down to suit English palates, and there are some English adaptations of Sri Lankan dishes – I have never seen a mushroom curry in Sri Lanka, for example. Apparently this reflects the background of the owner, whose mother was Sri Lankan but brought her children up in Wales and even managed to curry leeks.

The mushroom curry was fantastic, actually – real depth and richness from the mushrooms which was the perfect match for the spices. This was one of the hotter curries, prepared with home-roasted masala. A complete contrast was a dish of fine beans in coconut oil, which was mildly spiced with fennel and cumin and full of light, fresh flavours. The Real Ale Drinker was seeking the kind of fish curry you get everywhere in Sri Lanka, often made with tuna (which seems to be the staple fish there) and a mixture of spices including cinnamon and curry leaves. The closest thing to it was probably the Batticaloan salmon in a tomato and coconut sauce, but even that was quite different.

The only other fish curry was deep-fried jackfish, though there are also seafood dishes with squid, king prawns or crab. The last of these, the crab vada, was a mild dish with shredded crab meat, lemon and curry leaves. A few other curries were equally delicious (the range goes from chilli chicken to coconut lamb to warm devilled potato salad). We skipped starters, but you can get devilled king prawns, home-made samosas, or spicy lamb and potato cakes.

We drank St Peter’s ale from Suffolk (whose brewery I have had the pleasure of visiting in my East Anglian days), which has a light hoppiness that goes very well with the curry.

The desserts were not quite as strong as the main courses. We had a non-Sri Lankan chocolate brownie, seduced by the description of its dark stickiness, but it was not as intensely chocolatey as I would have hoped. The wattalapam, a Sri Lankan custard with coconut and ground nuts, was good but not mind-blowing.

Not a bargain-basement "curry house" (I have put this term in inverted commas, having read it described as lazy, but I hope it is acceptable in this context), but one that offers something a bit different, and very good curries to boot. There are certainly worse ways to celebrate National Curry Week.


Hop and Spice

53 Bedford Hill
London SW12 9EZ
www.hopandspice.com
020 8675 3121