Kricket

Where Modern Indian Cooking Found a Soho Home

London's Indian restaurant scene has long been divided between two poles: the white-tablecloth formality of Mayfair houses like Amaya and Benares, and the neighbourhood curry house that has anchored British high streets for generations. The gap between those two tiers — casual, technically serious, affordably priced — was largely unfilled when Kricket launched as a pop-up before settling at 12 Denman Street in Soho. That original Soho site remains the reference point for a group that has since grown to four London branches, and it still carries the energy of a place that had something to prove when it opened.

The broader shift it represents is worth noting. Across the past decade, a generation of Indian-led and India-influenced restaurants has moved away from the tandoor-and-tikka format toward regional specificity , coastal Keralan seafood, Goan pork traditions, the dried-chilli heat of Karnataka. Trishna did it with coastal Karnataka and Kerala in Marylebone; Ambassadors Clubhouse takes a different approach in its own register. Kricket's contribution to that movement is a small-plates format that keeps the price point democratic , rated ££ , while the Michelin Bib Gourmand it has held since 2024 confirms that the cooking operates above what that price implies.

The Room and Why the Counter Matters

The physical layout of the Denman Street site does a lot of editorial work. A counter running along the open kitchen is the dominant feature of the ground floor, and it is the seat to aim for. Counter dining at this level , watching the kitchen move through service, able to time your orders to the rhythm of what's coming off the pass , turns a meal into something more participatory than sitting at a conventional table allows. The downstairs room has a different character: lower light, more enclosure, a mood that suits late-evening bookings when the kitchen is running at full pace.

For a celebratory dinner where the occasion matters as much as the food, the counter is the more considered choice. It places you inside the action rather than observing from a remove, which suits smaller groups marking something , a birthday, a work milestone, a first visit to London , more naturally than the formality of a tasting-menu room. Compare the register to, say, The Fat Duck in Bray or L'Enclume in Cartmel, where ceremony is the product. At Kricket, the energy is convivial and the format encourages ordering broadly, sharing plates, and returning to the menu more than once through the meal.

The Food: Southern India as the Editorial Position

Chef Will Bowlby's menu tilts decisively toward India's southern and coastal states. Goan sausage croquettes, Keralan fried chicken with curry leaf mayo, and Karnatakan pork neck appear as signature points of reference in the restaurant's public record. What that list signals is a kitchen interested in the acidic, fermented, coconut-rich, and dried-spice traditions that characterise the Deccan plateau and India's western coastline , quite different from the North Indian Mughlai traditions that dominated London's earlier Indian dining canon.

The small-plates format suits this kind of cooking well. Southern Indian food has always been structured around multiple dishes eaten simultaneously rather than the sequential logic of European service, and the sharing format at Kricket reflects that. At ££ pricing across the board, the menu allows a table to order widely without the bill becoming a structural conversation. Opinionated About Dining has ranked the Soho site in its Casual Europe list in each year from 2023 through 2025 , most recently at #483 in one 2025 ranking , which places it in consistent company with serious casual restaurants operating at a different price tier than the Michelin-starred rooms of central London.

For context on the Indian dining category more broadly, formats like Trèsind Studio in Dubai and Opheem in Birmingham occupy the higher-end progressive tier. Kricket's position is different: it is making a case for southern Indian cooking as everyday-accessible rather than aspirational-occasion, while the awards record confirms the execution is not casual in the pejorative sense.

Occasion Dining at the Mid-Price Tier

There is a category of celebration that formal tasting menus handle badly: the informal milestone, the group dinner where different appetites and budgets need accommodating, the evening where the conversation should dominate and the food should keep pace without demanding attention. Kricket's format is well-calibrated for exactly that occasion type. The ££ price range means a generous order , several plates per person, a bottle of wine , stays within reach of a mixed group. The Bib Gourmand is Michelin's signal for this tier: good cooking at honest prices, which at Kricket means southern Indian technique applied without the premium-room surcharge.

Soho's geography adds practical value here. The Denman Street address sits at the edge of a neighbourhood dense with bars and late venues, which makes Kricket a natural anchor for an evening that continues after the meal. For visitors, it connects easily to the broader West End without requiring a cab. For groups arriving from different parts of the city, the central location reduces the logistical friction that can accompany dinner plans. Babur in Forest Hill occupies a different neighbourhood register within London's Indian dining picture , neighbourhood-anchored and more southerly , which illustrates how geographically spread the serious Indian cooking in this city has become.

Planning a Visit

Kricket at 12 Denman Street, London W1D 7HJ operates Tuesday through Saturday with lunch from noon to 2:30 pm and dinner from 5 to 10:30 pm. Monday keeps the same split-service pattern. Sunday runs a single service from noon to 9 pm, which makes it the more relaxed option for a longer lunch. The Google rating sits at 4.5 from over 2,400 reviews, a sample size large enough to treat as meaningful signal rather than noise.

The counter seats fill first and the room runs at a pace that makes a booking the sensible approach rather than a walk-in, particularly for weekend dinner. Groups marking a specific occasion should confirm with the restaurant directly about seating format and any preferences. The ££ price bracket means the decision calculus is different from a formal tasting-menu booking, but the Bib Gourmand and OAD rankings indicate this is not a restaurant to leave to chance.

For those building a broader London visit around dining, EP Club covers the full range: see our full London restaurants guide, our full London hotels guide, our full London bars guide, our full London wineries guide, and our full London experiences guide. For comparison at the higher end of British restaurant achievement, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and hide and fox in Saltwood represent the kind of destination-led dining that occupies a different tier and occasion type entirely.

What Regulars Order at Kricket

The dishes most consistently cited in Kricket's public record point toward the Keralan fried chicken with curry leaf mayo, the Goan sausage croquettes, and the Karnatakan pork neck. These three items map onto the restaurant's core editorial position , southern Indian coastal and Deccan cooking brought into a small-plates format , and they represent the range of the menu's geography rather than a single regional focus. Chef Will Bowlby's cooking has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand since 2024 and has appeared in Opinionated About Dining's Casual Europe rankings continuously since 2023, which gives those particular dishes a level of external validation beyond the restaurant's own description of them.