{"id":637883,"date":"2026-06-14T07:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T07:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637883\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T07:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T07:31:14","slug":"oudh-1722-london-se1-finickety-food-yes-but-still-a-blowout-feast-restaurant-review-restaurants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637883\/","title":{"rendered":"Oudh 1722, London SE1: \u2018Finickety food, yes, but still a blowout feast\u2019 \u2013 restaurant review | Restaurants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oudh 1722<\/a> is chef Aktar Islam<\/a>\u2019s first foray into London, following his barnstorming ascent in Birmingham with the likes of Opheem<\/a>. Brum\u2019s love for Islam is resolutely misty-eyed, while Opheem\u2019s 10-course tasting menu has garnered two Michelin stars. It is the ultimate special-occasion spot within a 100-mile radius, more akin to L\u2019Enclume in vibe than its fellow two Michelin-starred Indian Gymkhana<\/a> in Mayfair. Islam, however, is not taking this snoozily. Instead, he has taken on a listed Victorian townhouse near Borough Market in south-east London and opened a restaurant that\u2019s pretty solemn in its approach to Awadhi<\/a> cooking.<\/p>\n

A laughably brief catch-up on the tradition: the Nawabi era<\/a> began in 1722, thus the restaurant\u2019s name. The cuisine was luxurious, and defined by slow, thoughtful cooking, sealed pots, aromatic spice blends and subtle notes. Dead posh, basically. The polar opposite of fast, very spicy, grab-and-go food. 1722\u2019s \u00e0 la carte menu opens with a lamb shorba, a traditional welcome broth poured over finely chopped lamb tartare. Then spherical servings of gol guppa (you might know them by another moniker, pani puri<\/a>), filled with sprouting moong shoots and tiny edible flowers, and flooded with jaljeera-spiced cumin water. It feels unregal to shove the entire thing in your mouth, but needs must.<\/p>\n

\u2018The star of the show\u2019: Oudh 1722\u2019s mutanjan dam biryani of oxtail, aged basmati and sweet carrot. <\/p>\n

The menu then moves into naashta, or street snacks, in the loosest sense. Expect chaat with white peas, tempered yoghurt and sev<\/a>. Then there\u2019s gilawat, or melting kebabs, the stuff of Lucknowi legend. Dishes include gulnaar<\/a> tandoori chicken in smoked tomato and cream. If this all seems overly meaty, note the sabzi<\/a> section, which features things that will please the veggies: kaddu ki qorma of pumpkin and yoghurt, or gobi mussalam, a whole cauliflower with cashew and poppy seed.<\/p>\n

1722 feels like two stories under one higgledy-piggledy roof. There is the ancient one: nihari, say, or ox cheek in bone marrow sauce, and a dish traditionally cooked overnight and eaten at dawn after morning prayers. Then there is the modern one: a kitchen led by George Cooke, previously of Brat<\/a> and Noble Rot<\/a>, and a bar upstairs serving mango chutney margaritas and a brandy-based old fashioned made with stone fruit.<\/p>\n

\u2018Styled with precision\u2019: Oudh\u2019s poppadom selection with chutneys.<\/p>\n

The layout is charmingly eccentric. Fancy murals and strategically-hung tapestries cannot mask that this is a very old, listed building that was once used by hatmakers; at another stage in its existence, it was home to the restaurant Lupins<\/a>. It is set out over many floors, with narrow staircases leading to anterooms and hidden back doors, with a bar in the attic for those Bertha Rochester<\/a> moments. I rather love this: Oudh 1722 has fitted itself into history and made peace with this old beast, rather than attempting to dominate it.<\/p>\n

As you\u2019d expect from Islam\u2019s attempt to charm London, Oudh 1722 is a wholly gorgeous experience: lovely staff, a smooth operation. The food may be labour-intensive and styled with precision, but, thankfully, it\u2019s still ruddy delicious and generously portioned. They aim to stuff you. Perhaps the Awadhi tradition was to incapacitate their enemies via slow-cooked dal Bukhara, in which urad<\/a> lentils, butter and cream meet in spectacular decadence. Enormous lasooni jhinga (grilled king prawns) come smothered with garlic and flecked with raw mango. The star of the show for me, though, was a mutanjan dam biryani: a mountain of fragrant rice with melting, slow-cooked oxtail and bags of sweet carrot. I left with a doggy-bag of both for my fridge. Finickety food, yes, but you can still treat a relative to a blowout feast. Oudh 1722 may be Michelin-chasing, but it is also resolutely midriff-expanding.<\/p>\n

One of the oldest desserts in the Awadhi tradition: ras malai with pistachio and cardamom, at Oudh 1722, London.<\/p>\n

We finished with ras malai, a soft dumpling of fresh cheese soaked in chilled spiced cream, laced with crunchy pistachio and scented with cardamom, as well as a little scoop of nimish, a milk soft-serve with saffron, mango and rose petal. Apparently, that\u2019s one of the oldest desserts in the Awadhi tradition, so it wasn\u2019t just greed to order it; I was learning about history.<\/p>\n

Oudh 1722, combining ambition and sincerity with genuinely interesting cooking, will no doubt be one of the restaurant openings of 2026. Try it when you\u2019re faced with the rumoured 4,000-person waiting list at Gymkhana. I missed the Nawabi cooking era by at least 300 years, but thankfully, as a greedy person, there\u2019s a tiny nook near London Bridge where they\u2019ve still got a few stoves blazing.<\/p>\n

Oudh 1722<\/a> 66 Union Street, London SE1 (no phone). Open Weds-Sat, lunch noon-2.30pm, dinner 5.30-9.30pm, Sun lunch only noon-5pm. From about \u00a340 a head \u00e0 la carte, plus drinks & service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oudh 1722 is chef Aktar Islam\u2019s first foray into London, following his barnstorming ascent in Birmingham with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-637883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}