Cinnamon Kitchen

Where the City Comes to Mark the Moment

London's financial district is not short of places to expense a lunch or close a deal, but the options narrow considerably when the occasion calls for something more deliberate. Devonshire Square sits on the eastern edge of the City, its Victorian warehouse architecture converted into a courtyard of bars and restaurants that functions as an after-hours destination for the EC2 postcode. Cinnamon Kitchen occupies that courtyard with a covered outdoor terrace and a dining room that signals occasion without tipping into formality: exposed brickwork, high ceilings, and enough ambient noise to make a table feel animated rather than observed.

The location matters as much as the room. For anyone working between Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate, Devonshire Square is walkable. For those coming from further afield, Liverpool Street station is a short walk. The City has historically lacked the density of occasion-dining options available in Mayfair or Soho, and that gap has given Cinnamon Kitchen a structural advantage beyond its food.

Modern Indian Cooking in a City Context

Contemporary Indian restaurants in London have fragmented into several distinct tiers over the past decade. At one end, long-standing Mayfair addresses like Amaya and Benares operate in the higher price brackets with formal service models built around destination dining. At the other, neighbourhood restaurants such as Babur in Honor Oak Park maintain deep local loyalty without the occasion-dining apparatus. Cinnamon Kitchen sits between those poles: a restaurant with recognisable chef credentials and award-track recognition, priced and formatted for the City's professional dining culture rather than the West End's special-occasion economy.

Chef Vivek Singh is the common thread across the Cinnamon Group restaurants, and his approach, drawing on classical Indian technique while working with British ingredients and seasonality, represents a style that has become increasingly mainstream in London's better Indian restaurants. Trishna in Marylebone occupies similar territory with a coastal Indian focus; the restaurant format, by contrast, is broader in scope and built to handle the volume and occasion-range that a City location demands. That flexibility is deliberate and worth understanding before you book.

Where It Sits in the Awards Conversation

Opinionated About Dining listed the restaurant as Recommended in its Casual Europe category in 2023, then ranked it at #651 in 2024 and #778 in 2025. The movement between those years reflects the category's growth as much as any change at the restaurant itself, OAD's casual list has expanded significantly as assessors cover more ground, but the sustained presence across three consecutive cycles signals consistent performance at the level it operates. It has maintained its position through a period when London's Indian dining scene has become considerably more competitive.

That competitive context is worth mapping. The upper end of London's contemporary Indian scene now includes Trèsind Studio in Dubai as a reference point for where the format can reach internationally, while domestically, Opheem in Birmingham has shifted the conversation about what modern Indian cooking looks like outside London. The restaurant does not compete in that register, it is not a tasting menu destination, but it occupies a more durable position as a full-service occasion restaurant with a proven track record in one of London's most demanding dining postcodes.

For broader context across London's wider dining offer, the full London restaurants guide maps the city's dining across all price points and formats.

Occasion Fit: Who This Works For

The dining room's format and the City's social rhythms align in a specific way. The restaurant's open-to-10pm service from Tuesday through Saturday covers the post-work dinner window cleanly, and the room's size and noise level make it well-suited to group bookings where conversation can carry across a table. For milestone meals, it offers the kind of backdrop, dramatic space, recognisable name, reliable quality signal, that makes the decision easy to communicate to a guest list of mixed expectations.

Where it competes less directly is against the more intimate, lower-capacity Indian restaurants in London: Trishna's tighter room and more focused menu suit a two- or four-leading anniversary dinner more naturally. Similarly, Ambassadors Clubhouse occupies a different register. For a work dinner of eight to twelve, a team celebration, or a birthday where the group wants a full-service Indian restaurant with reliable credentials and central-City access, the restaurant's format is hard to argue with.

The restaurant is closed Sundays, which is standard for City restaurants that track their trade to the working week. The Saturday service is a less obvious fit for the location's weekday-heavy footfall, but it broadens the booking window for anyone visiting specifically rather than arriving from nearby offices. Hide and Fox in Saltwood is another reference point for the kind of occasion-dining format that works across both weekday and weekend contexts at a similar quality tier.

Planning Your Visit4FormatFull-service, occasion & group-friendlyOften counter or set-menu focused

What People Recommend at Cinnamon Kitchen

Based on the restaurant's awards positioning and the cuisine approach established across the Cinnamon Group, the kitchen's strengths lie in modern Indian cooking that draws on classical technique while incorporating British seasonal produce. Vivek Singh's wider reputation, built across the Cinnamon Club's long run at Westminster and developed through the Kitchen format, points toward dishes that handle spice as structure rather than heat, with an emphasis on refined presentation without abandoning the flavour depth that the cuisine's tradition demands.