Serhan Tekbas
Google
JAIPUR GLOW
The walls are soaked in a Jaipur-inspired pink hue, a shade that makes everything and everyone glow. Your skin blushes in its radiance, your date looks like they’ve been softly lit by an Oscar-winning cinematographer, and even your cocktail seems to be posing for a Renaissance painting.
The candles don’t just illuminate, they sculpt the space, drawing you closer to your Friday night date. It’s the kind of restaurant that makes even a mediocre date feel like the beginning of something cinematic. Proceed with caution: they may look different under the harsh reality of your kitchen’s LED strip lighting.
And let’s be honest this place is sexy. Not the “obnoxious red leather booth” kind of sexy, but the “low-lit, mysterious, ‘maybe I am the main character’” kind. The flickering candlelight, the moody pink tones, the whispering and hums all conspire to make you feel like a more handsome version of yourself.
That being said, I wish the interiors pushed just a step further—into the fantastical, the futuristic—deepening the magical world of Kricket. It already nods to the past, but why not fully embrace a contemporary Jaipur fantasy? Give us a giant reflective sculpture, oversized abstract tapestries, projection art—something that truly blurs the line between history and sci-fi daydream. Just a thought.
Now, let’s talk about the food.
The sea bream is a showstopper, reclining in a golden splash of curried sauce like it knows it’s the main event. The sauce? Fragrant, punchy, swirled with streaks of oil and reductions that look like a Turner painting. It’s rich, indulgent, and spicy enough to make you sweat just a little. But in a way that feels…intentional. The kind of heat that makes you bite your lip, pull your collar and ask, “is it me or is it getting hot in here..”
Then there’s the Keralan fried chicken, its batter shattering under your teeth like edible glass.
And while we’re here, Dishoom, watch out. For too long, it’s been the go-to for Indian-inspired dining in London, but compared to Kricket, Dishoom feels nostalgic, backward-looking, like a sepia-tinted postcard from a past era. Kricket Shoreditch, on the other hand, is something else entirely. It’s contemporary, self-assured, and effortlessly cool, defining itself as a restaurant that looks forward. Plus, let’s be honest—it certainly trumps the cold, shivering wait that normally comes as part of the Dishoom dining experience. While queues snake down the street outside Dishoom, diners at Kricket are already basking in its candlelit glow, cocktail in hand, lost in conversation, with no goosebump in sight.
Kricket doesn’t just feed you it seduces you. It lulls you into thinking you’re sexy too. It tricks you into believing that your date is completely transfixed by your wit, when really, they’re possibly hypnotized by the candlelight bouncing off their Negroni.
By the end of the night, you’ll half expect a director to call ‘cut.’ But no one does, and that feeling is worth coming for.
