Toast the City: Brigadiers is a culinary playground for adults
To get you in the mood for out Toast the City Awards celebrating everything that makes the Square Mile great, we’re celebrating some of the City’s top spots. This week: Brigadiers.
Brigadiers is a strange proposition, a sports bar-cum-Indian barbecue inspired by the wood panelled army bars of the sub-continent but housed in the polished surrounds of Bloomberg Arcade.
Walk in on any given evening and live cricket or football will be playing on the screens that hang throughout the bar while people sit around drinking cocktails or pints of lager, which may not immediately fill you with hope for the food offering. But the names above the door certainly should. Brigadiers is owned by the Sethi siblings Jyotin, Karam and Sunaina Sethi as part of JKS Restaurants, which also operates Trishna, Hoppers and the two Michelin starred Gymkhana (one of only four Indian restaurants in the world to hold two stars).
Any further reservations are dispelled when you enter the dark-wood dining room that’s permeated by the smell of live fire cooking. This is a place of barbecue street food with the trimmings you’d expect of a company that knows its way around a Michelin guide. We recommend the Lasooni Chicken Tikka Skewer, Goat Tikki Bun Kebabs and the Achari Beef Shortrib, although it’s the kind of place you could order different dishes half a dozen times and never come away disappointed.
If you want to dwell beyond your meal, entertainment ranges from a pool table, to a private poker room where, for £500, you can hire a croupier to deal to you and 10 of your mates. Don’t miss out on those cocktails, either – Brigadiers is as serious about mixology as it is barbecue and sports.
Brigadiers could find itself nominated for half a dozen of our Toast the City categories but we’re tipping it as a possible winner in the much-coveted Best Restaurant category. Keep an eye on the Toast the City website to find out who made the cut.