“Who knew we would be the Westminster canteen”

“We’ve had the pleasure of serving pretty much everyone, social and political. This is my fourth generation of British politicians,” chef Vivek Singh says as we sit in his restaurant The Cinnamon Club – an address situated in the former Grade II listed Old Westminster Library building just a short walk from the Houses of Parliament. “The role that the Cinnamon Club may or may not have played in recent British history is something I could have never imagined 25 years ago.” 

Singh, who is the Executive Chef and CEO of six restaurants – The Cinnamon Club, Cinnamon Kitchen City, Cinnamon Bazaar, Cinnamon Kitchen Battersea, Cinnamon Bazar Richmond and Cinnamon Kitchen Leeds – is a consummate host – and an open-book of stories one could listen to for hours. The Cinnamon Club, his beloved fine dining restaurant, credited with pioneering elevated Indian cuisine, is marking its 25th anniversary this year with a series of celebrations. On 13th June will be a special edition of the popular Supper Club at Cinnamon Club City (tickets are £75 for a nine-course feast).

We are seated in the low-lit downstairs bar of the original restaurant, jazz music humming in the background. Above us is the famous dining room – its stunning interior lined by a mezzanine of restored mahogany library shelves beneath soaring ceilings. It attracts a mixed crowd: one might well rub shoulders with celebrities or see faces from the British establishment. “Who knew we would be the Westminster canteen,” Singh jokes of his mainstay clientele. “But we pride ourselves on welcoming all – everyone gets the same service.”

Does he ever wonder about the momentous decisions that might have been made over the white-cloths and silverware? “Well, we only hear about the bad ones in the newspapers,” he laughs out loud. “I believe Plebgate started here, and then there’s what I call the curse of The Cinnamon Club: no-one who has ever lodged a leadership bid has ever gone on to win!” The chef likes to joke but is more serious for a moment. “You become part of the moss that you collect along the way and we have been very fortunate.”

Singh’s passion for food began in his childhood when growing up in Asansol, West Bengal. “Those early memories feel like another life or a movie – a time that doesn’t exist anymore,” he reflects on growing up in a coal-mining community. “My father was a mining engineer at a colliery. It was remote but to us it was just home.”

His fondest recollections are of the many gatherings held by the community. “There were around 500 people tops, but every wedding, birthday, and Republic Day people got together – and it all happened on the playing field in front of our house,” he recalls. “All the miners took part in the Holi festival of colours. It was quite messy but really great. Women from the neighbourhood would make little biscuits and samosas. My father would even join in preparing a massive platter of dried fruits and seeds.”

There are also the times at home with his mother. “We were far too young to appreciate it at the time but until about 1980 my mum didn’t cook on gas, but on coal. She was firing this thing every morning to get it going and then something would get cooked for breakfast – my father had a very regimented routine, he expected it – and she would then get it ready for cooking lunch. It was a never ending cycle: buying, cutting, firing and cooking,” he says.

There was also the occasional blow-in: “The bell would ring, and my father’s brother and cousins would turn up unannounced having travelled several days. Mum would start again. She’d make Puri and a quick potato something – and she’d be feeding four village bumpkins who’d eat 30 Puris each and then go for their nap,”  he roars with laughter again at the thought.

But the taste of those Puri and the tomato chutney his mother served linger to this day. “I mention them in one of my books,” he says. “Mum would make chutney when tomatoes were in season, and in those days they were considered a winter vegetable – available from October through to January. It was just amazing.”

As a boy the chef was not expected to help with the cooking but traces many of his influences to his mother, just as she drew knowledge from others. “She was taught how to cook from the women in the neighbourhood who happened to be Bengali. What they taught her was not necessarily home cooking,” he says. He talks of India’s diversity and an exposure to many different people that came with the experience of more flavours, colours and tastes. “There was this tradition of cooking on embers made of cow-pat – in the winters you would have a BBQ, a circle of fire, and people would gather around it and make dough balls with a spiced lentil filling. This was always served with a really pokey aubergine crush. The aubergines are chucked onto the fire when it is raging and they get an intense smokiness. We’d stud one with whole cloves of garlic and then it’s chopped with raw onions, chillies, mustard oil and salt – it is the most delicious thing.  At that time I was not a cook but I was a voracious consumer.”

The numerous weddings his family were invited to each year fed his love of food. “If my parents couldn’t go, I would volunteer. They would put a five rupee note in an envelope with best wishes to the family, and I would hand it over to the bride and the groom and then head straight for the marquee where they fed people. I loved it and learnt so much about hospitality without realising it,” he beams. Typical of Indian weddings, these were large affairs of 300 to 600 people. “60 people would be seated and someone would bring out the banana leaf, someone else came with the pickles and Puris – all of them egging you on to eat more. And then there were the marshals, who were told, ‘Make sure he eats well’ or ‘Don't let them leave without dessert’. There’s a hierarchy, a way things are organised, and it was all adding to my knowledge.”

Serendipity led him to hotel school. “I had the usual expectations: doctor, civil servant, but then I met someone who made hotel school sound exciting – like a three-year picnic. My father was not keen but off I went to Delhi,” Singh says. “Even then, I was an avid consumer. We’d make 60 rupees for four or five hours of work clearing tables etc but the food and the drink at the end was the real payment. It still is one of my favourite cities.” 

Singh excelled, and when the hotels came to select graduates, he was chosen by the five-star Oberoi Group, who had the pick of the bunch. He worked hard to become a chef, honing his craft in some 14 kitchens across diverse cuisines, and eventually heading up Chinese at Taipei, Thai at Baan Thai, and French at The Rotisserie in Kolkata. “But my ambition was to run an Indian kitchen,” he says. 

In Kolkata, he got his chance managing Gharana, a restaurant specialising in the royal court cuisines of India, and three years later in 1998, Singh was appointed the Indian Chef at Oberoi Rajvilas in Jaipur, one of the group's flagship properties. “It was the India Bridgerton – the most expensive and exclusive project. We’d fly in the best ingredients: lamb from Australia, Pacific salmon, the greatest Parmesan but they wouldn't use them for curry in my Indian kitchen. There was no evolution, no experimentation and in less than two years I was bored…”

By December 2000, the chef had taken another leap and moved to London to co-found The Cinnamon Club with British businessman Iqbal Wahhab, whom he had met a few years earlier while working in Jaipur. Their concept was to redefine people’s expectations of Indian food. “We were young - and the less you know, the less you fear,” he says.

Free to experiment, the chef was a child in a candy shop in his new kitchen. “My wife would say more like a bull in a china shop,” he laughs. He recalls using 50 kinds of fish and seafood in the first year-and-a-half of opening. “From the start, we did things that were against the grain. Can you believe I was changing our dinner menus every night in a 230-cover restaurant for the first five years?” he asks. 

Singh attributes the restaurant’s longevity to this drive for innovation and experimentation. “People who stand still will automatically go backwards because others will catch up,” he says. “In the beginning the focus was celebrating the best of both worlds, bringing Indian inspiration and spicing and combining that with the best local seasonal produce money could buy. But then, along the way, you question why only the top echelons can enjoy this, and the challenge becomes offering quality dishes for £50-60 per head instead of £100. That is when Cinnamon Kitchen was born, our evolution. Then, of course, around 2012 there was a new found enthusiasm for street food – less pretentious food but good ingredients and bold flavours and that is how Cinnamon Bazaar came about.”

His next move? “I am fascinated in what Indian food might have looked like 500 years ago, just before the arrival of potatoes, tomatoes and chillies – and what it would look like if I wrote a menu pre 1500s then pre 1200s,” he says “And I’m writing an anniversary cookbook.” Surveying the culinary scene 25 years after he arrived in London, he is proud of the cool, new wave of Indian gastronomy that is thriving in the city. “That is what we set out to do, to start a movement,”  he smiles. I shake his hand expecting to leave. “Now, you must try some food,” Singh says with true Indian hospitality. “I hope you are hungry…”