Review: Gunpowder
Gunpowder Brings Indian Festivals to London – for £29
By Helen Down
Gunpowder – the restaurant group specialising in serving up Indian cuisine with an inventive small plate twist – is, for the rest of 2025, giving its India Club event series a smart new spin. On the last Sunday of every month, its Soho and Tower Bridge outposts will host festival-themed feasts inspired by Indian celebrations, each with a bespoke menu.
We were lucky enough to sample September’s Onam edition in honour of Kerala’s harvest festival. For someone still living off the memories of a recent trip to the Southern Indian state, our visit brought back all the holiday feels… and flavours.
Don’t be fooled by Gunpowder Soho’s unassuming exterior. Inside it’s bursting with vibes and is home to an eclectic but on-trend crowd enjoying kooky sitar-infused covers while devouring seven plates for just £29 a head. At that price, you’d be forgiven for expecting, well, not much. But it was clear to see why the OG Gunpowder in Spitalfields was once awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
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We kicked off with a sambharam cocktail. Rum, tamarind and cumin, it was a refreshingly savoury break from sugary classics. We then tucked into a triptych starter of curry leaf achappam (a crispy flower-shaped biscuit filled with a coconut raita), jackfruit rolls (a touch dense, but nicely offset by the achappam’s delicacy) and mini savoury doughnuts filled with towers of Cornish crab meat.
There followed a gigantic portion of slow-cooked samba rice biryani served in a banana leaf alongside a surprisingly feisty coconut curry and accompanied by fluffy but crisp dosas perfect for scooping. Much like our cocktails, the pudding – coconut and vermicelli payasam with cardamon – was another triumph of savoury and sweet where hair-thin noodles waited at the bottom of a pool of milky cardamon custard.
With its modern twist on Indian dishes and its international wine list, Gunpowder’s Festival Edition is an East-meets-West Sunday session which, at £29 for seven courses, is an unmissable alternative to a boring old roast.
Gunpowder: gunpowderrestaurants.com
Insta: @gunpowder_london
Price: £29/head + drinks and service
Upcoming Festival Editions:
26th October – Durga Puja
30th November – Diwali
28th December – Christmas
