Food for Thought: Kricket

From pop-up pioneer to leading chef and restaurateur, Will Bowlby has achieved enough success in under a decade to last him a lifetime. He is the founder of the highly-acclaimed Indian restaurant Kricket, which now has three branches: the original flagship in Soho, a second in Brixton and a third – its largest – in White City. Bowlby first became enchanted with cooking through the success of the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and set up his own catering company ‘Will2Cook’ aged 16, which funded his degree and travels afterwards. After his studies, Bowlby asked the legendary chef Rowley Leigh how to break into the industry and got his first job working at Le Café Anglais in Bayswater. At 24, he was headhunted for a head chef position at a European restaurant called Cheval in Mumbai and the rest –  as they say – is history.

“I had never been to India, and I thought it would be such an interesting opportunity,” Bowlby tells me. “Living in a city like Mumbai, food is everywhere, and it inspires you. I realised more could be done back in the UK; dishes beyond curries, rice and dhals.” After a two-year stint, Bowlby returned to the UK with a transformative idea in his pocket. He had spotted a gap in the market after realising there were only either high-end Indian restaurants in London or cheap curry houses but no in-between. “I wanted something in the middle,” he explains, “where the quality was as good as the high-end restaurants, but the price stayed low.” To enact his idea, Bowlby worked at Vivek Singh’s Cinnamon Kitchen before joining forces with his business partner Rik Campbell to set up a 20-seater metal container at Pop Brixton in 2015. The highly-acclaimed food truck quickly metamorphosed into a restaurant, and the Kricket flagship was opened just over a year later.

Bowlby says the primary philosophy of Kricket is to “explore the variety of Indian food using British produce.” He tells me how the inspiration for his dishes come from his experiences of travelling around the Indian sub-continent. It comes as no surprise that a population of over 1.36 billion people is a myriad of flavour, from salty to sweet, spicy to mild, lightly-flavoured to dark. “Dishes not only vary region-to-region but also household-to-household. Everyone has their take,” Bowlby explains. “In the North, there is a lot of Mughal influence. The food is very Middle-Eastern. It is hearty and filling, and there is a lot more ghee, dairy and meat. Whereas if you head West, in places like Goa, there are strong Portuguese influences. It is a lighter-interpretation of food. Expect lots of coconut, fish and peppercorns.”

Despite the enormous variety and ingenuity of Indian cuisine, there still exists a cliché surrounding Anglo-Indian food. We narrow-minded Brits tend to conceptualise ‘Indian food’ as revolving primarily around kormas, vindaloos, poppadums, onion bhajis and of course, the UK’s most popular dish: the chicken tikka masala. But, innovators like Bowlby are seeking to disrupt this stereotype to showcase the sheer variety of Indian food by using the best of British produce.

Kricket’s menu is both contemporary and creative, serving everything from: samphire pakora with date and tamarind chutney, Keralan fried chicken with curry leaf mayonnaise (Kricket’s own KFC), goose vindaloo, pumpkin with makahana sauce and hazelnuts, celeriac chaat, tandoori poussin to chai brûlée, almond and tahini nankhatai.

“A good example of what we do at Kricket can be seen with one of our most popular dishes: the samphire pakora”, Bowlby explains. “You can’t get samphire in India, but you can in the UK. Knowing this, we decided to deep fry the samphire into a pakora so it’s crispy and salty. Then we serve it with a date and tamarind chutney and chilli garlic mayonnaise to give it the perfect balance of sweet and salty.” A perfect example of Anglo-Indian cuisine without having even to give the nod to the all-hailed tikka masala.  

We get onto the matter of lockdown and the devastation it has had for so many restaurants up and down the UK. “It’s been tough”, Bowlby admits. “When Covid hit, our main priority was to save the business, and so we launched a delivery operation, did meal kits and hired more people in the process. I can’t wait till I can get back into the kitchen and see people eating the food off the plate in front of you!” To make up for lost time, Bowlby has a few projects in the pipeline – ones he can’t yet publicise, although, his reticence has not scotched rumours of a new Kricket based in Amsterdam. 

Bowlby was quick and decisive in answering the question about his last supper. He decided on “something light and seafood-y” and so chose “oysters” for his starter. For his main course, he picked “a rib of beef with chips and béarnaise sauce”. For pudding, he chooses “something that involves chocolate, peanuts, caramel and ice cream in some form.” We settle on a tart. “To wash it all down, I’d have a bottle of red. Wait, NO! A magnum!” he quickly rectified. “Well, it is my last meal, after all.”

Chefs like Will Bowlby are helping transform the misconceptions around Anglo-Indian cuisine. In using the best of British produce combined with the vibrant flavours of India, restaurants like Kricket offer a chance to have an affordable experience beyond the traditional high-street Indian restaurant. So, for those who stumble into a brightly-lit curry house late at night for a vindaloo and chips, consider saving up your pennies for a meal at Kricket – your taste buds may just thank you for it. 

Butter Garlic Crab
From Kricket cookbook. 
Serves 4

Ingredients 

150 g unsalted butter 
4 tablespoons minced garlic
3 teaspoons finely chopped green chillies
4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
350 g picked white crab meat
40g picked brown crab meat
2 tablespoons lime juice
a small handful of coriander leaves sea salt, to taste
Salt, to taste

To serve: 

4 store-bought papads or freshly baked bread 
10 sheets nori, blitzed to a powder (optional)

Method 

Heat a couple of tablespoons of water in a large heavy-based saucepan until bubbling. Add the butter and stir over medium heat so an emulsion is formed.

Stir in the garlic, green chillies and black pepper and cook for a few seconds before adding the white and brown crab meat.

Cover and cook for 5 minutes, until the crab meat has absorbed most of the liquid and the consistency is creamy and smooth. Remove the pan from the heat and finish with lime juice and coriander. Season to taste with salt.

Spoon the crab into bowls and serve with papads dusted with nori powder or fresh bread.