Bibi Restaurant was located in Mayfair and led by Chef Chet Sharma and serving dishes inspired by Indian cusine.   At lunch they serve a 4 course set menu and have a Chef’s Selection tasting at dinner.  They have a number of supplements, like caviar, wagyu and truffles that you can add to your meal and you do get 2 choices for dessert.  The corner building gave them a long space for which a counter ran much of the length.   The open kitchen faces the first part of the counter and the bar faces the rest.  Opposite are curved booth seating which we were lucky to get as solo or pairs are usually seated at the counter.  We chose to drink gin and tonic with the meal and they turned out to be £20 which seemed high when the whole lunch menu was just £65.  We got the menu without additions or supplements.  The service was nice but the food seemed uninspired and lacked a lot of spice that I expect from Indian cuisine.   Nothing was bad but I would be hard-pressed to recommend the place unless you were desparate to a good spot for lunch.

Set-up

 

Food

Snacks for while you look at the menu were cheese papadams with mint chutney dip.  One of our papadams was stale and chewy, the other nicely crisp.  We told the server and he happily brought others and more dip.

 

Next was a mushroom broth with toasted buckwheat.  It was good.

 

Hamachi and Blood orange were in a broth of nimbu pani (lemon drink) topped with toasted buckwheat.  It was fine.

 

Cotswold’s Paneer came with 2 sauces and a small nicely blanched leaf.  The orange and green sauces had spiciness that hit on different parts of your mouth – one front and the other back of the tongue.  Both were good and were needed by the mild cheese.

 

Texel lamb Nihari (slow cooked meat) was served in a bun.  The meat was cooked 24 hours and a cup of gravy was on the side.  You were to dip the sandwich in the gravy before bites.  The gravy was really smokey and fun but not spicy.  The bun was quite soft and the sandwich was nicely enhanced by the gravy.

 

Sharmaji’s Lahori chicken came out as a selection of bowls to share.  The sliced chicken in the bigger bowl was covered with a yogurt and cashew sauce.  A bowl of dahl made with lentils was next to a bowl of rice with crunchy toppings.  Pickled carrot was in the dish with the stuffed red peppers.  The tender chicken was good with the sauce but needed the additon  of the hot red peppers to give it zip.  The lentils were fine as was the rice, but the crunchy rice on top made it more interesting.  All had good flavors.

 

Rhubarb and ginger kulfi or Banana and coconut kulfi were the dessert choices.  We had one of each of the Indian frozen desserts that came out like a popsicle.  The coconut and banana were in a semi-sweet chocolate while the rhubarb and ginger was in white chocolate.  Both were good and nice light desserts for a lunch meal but enough to satisfy a sweet tooth.

 

Final treats were an Indian rose macaron and a passion fruit pâte de fruit. Neither was good.