Cardiff . Restaurants in Wales . Uncategorized

Purple Poppadom, Canton, Cardiff: ‘Magnificent Seven’ tasting menu review

On July 16, 2024 by The Plate Licked Clean

This menu arrives just in time.

It is a busy period for southern Indian food in Cardiff. Koottaan has made an encouraging start, and Little Kochi (reviewed here) has built on its recent listing in The Good Food Guide to expand with a standalone takeaway. Yards away from Purple Poppadom’s Canton base, Mum’s Daily has opened moments from Mattancherry: while just down the road, the imminent Rasathi neighbours Chennai Dosa.

It seems timely, then, that the man whose cooking introduced a vital new strain into the DNA of the city’s Indian food does something to make everyone sit up and pay attention.

Make no mistake: that’s exactly what this ‘Magnificent Seven’ tasting menu does.

It’s an intriguing idea from Anand George and his team. And a team effort is exactly what this is: seven courses, seven chefs, each celebrating their region of India.

This isn’t a selection of smaller portions from an existing menu, as is done well elsewhere. Instead, we have this pooling of ideas from a team which has kept Purple Poppadom at the forefront of Southern Indian food in the city for years. The welcome from Raman and Adam front of house is as warm as ever, but this menu is new territory for the kitchen.

Forget those delicate little puri you shepherd gingerly to your mouth, with their shirt-ruining peril for the heedless. Infused with beetroot, this shell holds a riot of good things: the earthy snap of little mung beansprouts, the sweetness of pomegranate, tamarind and infused yogurt.

Prawn kari impresses. The prawns, meaty-tender, are deftly done. It’s boldly-flavoured stuff, with vivid spicing playing against onion, long cooked into sweetness, a broadside of garlic and the salty snap of lightly crisped samphire. before being finished with podi (powdered sundried prawns).

Momo, next. These steamed dumplings have been my obsession for three decades and more- Bristol’s Natraj, long gone now- really did a number on me. They’re not easy to find locally, and never as refined as this. The delicately seasoned and judiciously fatty chicken filling is lightly steamed, and presented in the soupier ‘jhol’ style broth- hot, tangy, sour- which makes for a heartily satisfying course. If the spicing of these two courses threatens to carry over a little into the next dish, then some kind of sorbet, often found on past Purple Poppadom menus, would be good here as a reset before the altogether more delicate next instalment.

I’m intrigued by the idea of a guinea fowl seekh kebab: the prospect of using a famously lean meat, which in less skilled hands could easily dry in the blistering heat of the tandoor, will need a light hand. What arrives is subtly spiced with garlic, ginger and coriander and lightly done: I’m told they use the whole bird to up the fat content, and a pineapple chutney is a lovely touch, a delicate complement. This is skilful cooking from from Chef ‘Sid’ Siddhartha, who has been Anand’s right hand for years here.

A spiced cauliflower and pea soup is a light prelude to what comes next. It’s a pretty thing, vividly shaded. That green pea soup is downright drinkable, and the addition of a few roasted green peas for  snap and crunch is inspired.

You may well be offered a brief pause at this point. Take it, because here comes the heft of bone marrow varuval. Anand’s dish celebrates Kerala- of course- and if you ordered it at Tukka Tuk Canteen (whose remodelled reopening is some of the best local restaurant news I’ve had this year), you’ll very happy to see this one back.

It arrives as the centerpiece, and easily the richest, heaviest course: the plating has been rethought since an earlier ‘feedback’ session visit. The chilli, coconut and coriander seed make for a lavishly rich, heady sauce: stir in that lascivious wobble of marrow, but leave enough to indulge the visceral pleasure of scooping out that length of bone. To pull apart those buttery layers of laccha paratha. To tear and dip and dredge.

Not meaty enough for you? Shovel up those crisp little nubbins of fried beef and fried shallots. It’s as if the brief was ‘MEAT: THE GREATEST HITS’. It’s unforgettable.

Yoghurt steamed to a gentle set, finished with the bright burst of fresh mango, sees us home. It’s beautifully judged: a light, elegant finish to a sumptuous menu which impresses at every turn.

‘This is pretty much flawless’,  says my friend, a frequent visitor to Goa and Kerala. She’s right: apart from the remarkably polished cooking, this is Purple Poppadom laying down a subtle marker, a reminder that no one in Cardiff is cooking Indian food to quite this standard. A timely reminder, against all these new openings, that this is still the local benchmark.

But let’s not do it the disservice of pigeonholing it as ‘just Indian’. This is some of the best cooking in the city right now, irrespective of genre, and you should make it your mission to find out for yourself.

‘The Magnificent Seven’: 69.95 per person, served for a minimum of two: add 34.95 per person for matching wines

185a Cowbridge Road East, upper floor, Cardiff CF11 9AJ

https://purplepoppadom.com/reservations/

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