Out & About Winter 2018

FOOD & DRINK - RESTAURANT REVIEW

The Cardamom, Pangbourne

CAROLE ELGUETA savours the spices and flavours of Indian cuisine at The Cardamom, Pangbourne

B y day, 3-5 Reading Road is the Café St Louis, offering a tempting array of breakfasts, light lunches, sandwiches, daily specials and home- made cakes. By night, however, this small corner of Pangbourne, just a hop and skip from the George Hotel, sheds its daytime garb to turn into a hot little bistro, focussing on the regional cuisines of India. Abbs Waess, the owner of this new venture, Cardamom, says that he has developed and researched all the dishes himself. “I love food and to discover new foods. I set out to bring a different part of Indian cuisine to the menu – all my dishes have a heritage route.” Which means that should you opt for the Nilgiri lamb chops, for instance. Abbs can tell you how the dish originates from the hilltops of Tamil Nadu (literally, blue hills, in southern India), where food is cooked on open fires with lots of fresh, crushed herbs. “It’s quite a remote region,” says Abbs, “whose food is still being discovered by the rest of India, let alone the rest of the world.”

On Cardamom’s gourmet menu there are other unusual and authentic dishes, such as as Railway Lamb Curry, an on-the-bone meat curry with potatoes, made famous by the hawkers and traders plying their wares on the sprawling Indian rail network, something certainly much more typically Golden Triangle than Golder’s Green. For Abbs, who also ran the renowned Blue Cobra in Theale and restaurants in Newbury, Cirencester and Reading, this is another family affair, but very much a new concept in terms of the day/night venue. Having opened just five months ago, he says that, “everyone is discovering, and re-discovering, us. We are re-connecting with our former client base.” I’m not surprised that his former patrons are coming back for more after the meal we enjoyed. I’ll confess now that I don’t like my food too spicy and, having explained this to Abbs, we were served dishes perfectly and deliciously pitched at my level, while also satisfying the chilli rush desired by my partner. We started with pappadoms with four dips – a very hot pickle, a smooth and sweet mango chutney, a mild and

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