Christmas at Mowgli Street Food
Sometimes all the turkey dinners get a bit much in December, so the Mowgli Christmas menu offers something a little bit different. I was delighted to be invited to their Leicester restaurant yesterday to try it for myself.
Inspired by Indian street food and homecooking, the Mowgli menu has a range of accessible dishes in the most unashamedly Instagrammable setting you can imagine. It’s Christmas 365 days a year with the twinkling fairy lights strewn all over the venue. We declined the offer to sit on the swing seats though, I don’t think it would be that great for my back. Plenty of guests were happy to choose them though.
The Christmas feasting menu offers really good value for £35 in my opinion. They’ll start you off with a glass of bubbles or a bottle of beer. We opted for the Prosecco although I have to admit that the coupe glass is not my preference. I do find that your drink loses its effervescence too quickly in them, although you can enjoy the opportunity to take some great Wolf of Wall Street inspired pictures. To kick off foodwise, you’ve got the yoghurt chat bombs, that you eat all in one go. The puri shells were deliciously crisp and the burst of yoghurt and fragrant spice in your mouth is great. One of mine was a real monster though, so it was not the slightest bit elegant to eat. Yoghurt everywhere and cheeks puffed out like a hamster. It certainly got our appetite ready for more.
To start you can take your pick from fenugreek fries, Gunpowder chicken or Himalayan cheese toast. We got the chicken and fries to share, and they were probably my pick of the meal. The garam masala on the crisp fried chicken really set it off – I could eat a bucket of them and nothing else. The fries were little fried potato cubes and a really tasty, slightly sweet sauce was just the perfect accompaniment. Nothing at Mowgli is particularly hot – they keep a very low level to cater for all tolerances I would suggest – but there are some really distinct flavour profiles in the light spicing that they use. It’s delicate and interesting.
The star turn is the tiffin box. You can choose whether you want the meat or veg options, but the dishes you get are pot luck. This dish also adds a little bit of theatre to the table with the tiffin opened up in front of you and the dishes presented. Our first box was the Mother Butter Chicken with the Temple Dahl. I was pretty happy with that – I think those are probably the two dishes I would have ordered from the main menu, given the chance. The Butter Chicken sauce was the star of the show. Deliciously light, sweet and creamy spiced tomato and yoghurt, it was rich without weighing heavily. The chicken was tender and moist within. A delight to eat. The dahl was fine – not as buttery as I usually hope for, but still flavourful and comforting.
Next up we had the Agra Ginger Chicken, which actually did not offer much in the way of ginger flavour. This was perhaps the most uninspired of the dishes. The chicken was fine, it tasted OK but nothing to write home about there. That was served up beside a portion of Darjeeling tomato and spinach sauced chickpeas, which were very enjoyable. We shared all four dishes, supplied with one pot of rice between us and found it to be ample. We were asked if we’d like any breads but I think that would probably be too much food for all but the very biggest appetites.
In fact, I was already feeling fit to burst by the time it came to pudding. There were two options here, so again we took one of each. I thought the chocolate brownie was delightful. Served warm with a gently melting ice cream crowning the top, I was only sad that I was so full up that it was hard to enjoy! My dining partner heartily recommended the mango sorbet cone even if it’s hardly the season for mango right now!
All in all, it was an experience I would recommend. There’s nothing on the menu that you won’t see throughout the year. But as someone new to the “Mowgli Experience” I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to get to grips with the full spectrum of gourmet delights they have on offer. Some dishes were considerably more successful than others, but there was nothing wrong with any of them. I was pleased to find that Mowgli offers both style and substance. Take a chance on a tiffin, and give it a go for yourself.
Head to Instagram to watch the reel of my visit.
Our meal was gifted for the purpose of review, but as ever I’m afraid my opinions are my own. If I don’t enjoy something, I’m going to tell you about it regardless of who pays!
