Hi - Yet again it's been far too long since I've posted an entry.
We've had a good summer at Babur. We took the restaurant on the road. We didn't go far, but we had a good trip. Our first outing was to Blythe Hill Fields in June for what was the Brockley village fete and it was a terrific day out. We met a lot of people we hadn't seen in a long time and the weather couldn't have been better. And if you think a postcode in SE London doesn't know what a village fete should be, we had Morris dancers, the local church choir, the village brass band and welly-wanging. In July we went at least a whole mile further, to the Horniman Museum's Utsavan Fest, a celebration of music from India and they had a wonderful line-up of performers.
Our 23rd Baburthday celebration went very well and customers were very pleased with the effort our chefs and wine champion made in matching up five dishes to five wines we had selected for a tasting menu.
The news that has me very excited at the moment is Harden's 2009 London Restaurants guide. Harden's has always liked Babur and we've been very grateful to them and their customer/reviewers for their good opinion of us. But this year's guide had a special treat for us. We found out about it in the Evening Standard in an article about the release of the new Harden's and it said:
"Babur is named the capital's best restaurant in the £34-a-head and under category.The restaurant in Honor Oak Park is described as a modern Indian with wonderfully original cuisine."
It's hard to say just how exciting and wonderful that was to read and how good for all of Babur's hard-working staff to have some recognition. Thank you again to all who took the time and had the interest to write about us.
We've got our new a la carte menu up and we're hoping response to it will be good. Putting a new menu together is like playing three-dimensional chess. When you've got a short menu, every dish has to work for its place. Each one has to be different from the other, with different ingredients, cooking methods and spicing. The work of the menu has to be spread around the different stations in the kitchen, otherwise we get gridlock when it's busy and that's not good. And, of course, we have to keep our eyes on the cost of things because we have to be able to provide good value.
That's it for now but will be writing again very soon as we're getting ready for our next mini-food festival. We'll be celebrating Diwali with an exciting range of vegetarian dishes from 15 October to 30 November. So keep a look-out and stop by again soon.
