Spend your moolah on Mooli’s

Situated just off Shaftsbury Avenue in the heart of the West End, a district known for its wide variety of theatres and eateries, Mooli’s is a small, minimalistic and trendy restaurant which stands out from the crowd by serving food that’s a little bit different. Fed up with the cuisine wrongly assumed to be ‘Indian’ in London, cough Brick Lane, Mooli’s is the brainchild of two former bankers who saw a gap in the market for cheap authentic Indian food on-the-go. For this reason you won’t find a tikka masala or anything of that sort at Mooli’s!

Instead Mooli’s speciality are the wraps they offer in five flavours, which the owners claim were inspired by travelling the length and breadth of India, from Delhi to Goa in search of the best street food on offer. This is shown in the menu which contains flavours from all over India, replicated at their Frith street address by a chef, or mooli-master as he’s known, whose CV includes stints in various 5-star hotels and even a Michelin-starred restaurant. Each roll is technically a Rumali roti a kind of Indian bread, which translated into English literally means handkerchief bread due to its extreme thinness. Each roll is made from specially mixed flour, made on a wedge press machine exported all the way from Texas which was originally intended for the mass production of tortillas. As someone who used ‘make-your-own’ fajita kits, with their tough, chewy and rough textured wraps, I could immediately taste that this bread was something new and different.

I first ordered the Keralan Beef Mooli. The soft thin freshly-made wholewheat bread surrounded tender chunks of coconut and Malabar spice marinated beef and seemed to melt in my mouth. If a Mooli wrap could be compared to anything it would probably be a shawarma roll. However, unlike a shawarma roll where the meat is the main attraction, the salad just fills space and the bread usually has the texture of cardboard, what puts a Mooli far ahead in the fast food stakes is the way that all the different components in the wrap contribute to the eating experience. In the beef wrap, for example, the beef was joined in the wrap by a fresh cucumber raita and a tomato and onion salad. The combination of the black pepper and other spices in the sauce, the soothing effect of the yoghurty raita and the juicy salad results in a meal perfect for warming you up on cold winter’s night.

Feeling up for something a bit different, I was recommended the Goat Mooli by the friendly staff. This wrap contained pieces of goat curried in a traditional Punjabi way with a tomato onion mix and a hint of lime juice. For those who have never tried goat before it is very similar to lamb or mutton, with a stronger more musky taste. The meat was once again perfectly tender and piping hot, having been freshly cooked just before, the sauce however was spicier than the beef.

For the vegetarians out there, Mooli’s offer two wraps: chickpea or paneer. I tried the latter, which contained a light shredded Indian cheese, spiced with a panch phoran 5 spice blend typical of eastern India, grated carrots and a crunch of mixed leaf salad. This wasn’t personally to my taste as I’m a firm believer that a wrap has to have some sort of meat in it but I did fall in love with the deliciously refreshing mango lassi with a subtle hint of ginger that I washed it all down with.

So you’re probably thinking that Mooli’s, with its Central London location, insistence on quality ingredients, professional chef and a painstaking attention to detail when it comes to their food and flavours, would be out of range of a student’s budget and exorbitantly higher than a run of the mill fast-food joint. But that’s where you’re wrong. Possibly the most surprising thing about Mooli’s is how cheap the food is. For under a fiver you can purchase a Mooli which would easily fill you up, but if you’re working to a budget I thoroughly recommend the Mini Moolis which are in the region of £3.

So if you ever find yourself in Soho, hungry, fed up with Chinatown and trying to avoid the tourists, take your copy of Felix along and claim a free mango lassi with your meal.

Mooli's 50 Frith Street, Soho. W1D 4SQ

www.moolis.com