Kathryn Flett reviews Amrutha, London SW18: 'an object lesson in how to do vegan food'

Confusingly, it boasts neither a sofa, a Rat Pack tribute act nor even a drinks licence, so you may comfortably ignore the “lounge” in “Amrutha Lounge”. As for “Amrutha”? In Hinduism it’s a drink consumed by the gods to achieve immortality – though, granted, not in London SW18.

It would be easy to ignore its presence, too; it’s sited, eminently missably, in a small, plain room behind plate glass on a main road in Earlsfield. However, on a Tuesday evening there was a queue for tables, proof that Amrutha (opened early last year by thirtysomething school friends Arvin Suntaramoophy and Shyam Kotecha, who’d started selling street food in 2014) has achieved some sort of local transcendence.

So, I co-opted my friend Jason, whose manor this is, as my dining compadre. Earlier in the day he had texted me with a link to Amrutha’s website and the words: “I think we want the Grand Selection, don’t we?” My response: “Without even looking at the menu, we will want the Grand Selection” – if only because, this being a vegan restaurant, anything less than Grand was likely to see me diverting via Maccy D’s on the journey home.

Amrutha’s super-hotness was confirmed by the fact that I could only get a table for either 6.30pm or 8.30pm, maybe because Jason’s partner was, by chance, already booked in with five mates.  I looked at the menu online. I liked the phrase “Vegan Soul Food”, while the Grand Selection turned out to be the entire menu, only noodle-free, with unlimited top-ups and all-in for… 20 quid a head. There’s a BYO policy, and if you don’t think the meal is worth what they’re charging, you can pay what you like. And if you can’t afford anything, you can still get fed if you volunteer some of your time. As well as being vegan, the ethos is decidedly Buddhist.

Now here’s the thing: I “get” ­veganism (and indeed Buddhism) – I really do. I get the “environmental ­veganism” concept, saving the planet/animals/eating ethically and responsibly – and I get the fashion angle, too – i.e. that any 16-year-olds who aren’t currently toying with changing their gender are probably soft-optioning a period of veganism. I also understand that it’s a diet, not a cuisine, and that some traditional ­regional cuisines are necessarily going to make for pretty bad veganism: Germany, Scotland and south-west France spring to mind as places where wannabe vegans might simply be laughed at before being lightly sautéed alive, probably in butter.

On the other hand, I very much don’t get the idea of imitative veganism – i.e. “sausages”, “bacon”, “burgers”, “cheese”. However, as Amrutha’s owners have Sri Lankan roots I felt optimistic that what I ate would be equal parts pretty, tasty and worthily “sausage”-free. And to take the edge off the ­“worthy”, Jason had brought chablis.

“Colour-wise, this table looks like The Muppet Show,” said Jason. As a vegan spread could easily have looked like The Simpsons, we were clearly ahead. Our smiling waitress rattled through the 12 dishes: a Miss Piggy-pink beetroot gazpacho for use as a dip, a Kermit-green curry, a bowl of rice, a spicy chickpea-based daal with lentils, a spinach and tomato salad, another of “massaged” kale with a mango dressing, a pile of deep-fried mushroom, aubergine and broccoli ­pakora to be dipped into the gazpacho, a piquant guacamole with radish, a ­spiralised beetroot salad, a zing-wow tamarind and coconut dip for the chickpeas and a dense-yet-light “cashew cheese”.

“There must be a better name than this for something so tasty,” observed Jason – “Casheese, maybe?” – and “This beet gazpacho has a 55-mile flavour contrail behind it that just keeps blooming and developing.”  That was almost the least of it. Every single dish was an object lesson in terms of how veganism, done properly, is far from a culinary compromise. That the sum total of all these potentially subtle flavours sang together in a harmony of both complexity and ­purity made me very happy; that this was happening in SW18 made me want to surf Rightmove.

There is, in short, something quite astoundingly special going on at ­Amrutha – something that makes any default to quasi-amusing critical ­glibness look both futile and mean-spirited because, in truth, just being there brought out my best me. And if my best me isn’t very funny, then it’s just as well I got all my jokes out of the way in the first half of the review, ­because the food at Amrutha is a laughing matter only if you are bursting with joy. Literally, in our case, though we didn’t need to ask for top-ups – somehow the plates just didn’t seem to empty – and we ate a lot.

Jason, who makes jokes for a living, felt no need to be funny, either. “It’s the closest thing to food magic  I’ve ever experienced.” And we hadn’t even ordered the drink-of-the-gods mango lassi.  So, anyway: Amrutha is, statistically TripAdvisor’s top London restaurant, with (as of this writing) an extraordinary 398 five-stars out of 433 reviews. I’d have given it 10/10, but I know the room (and the loos) won’t appeal to everyone.
This is almost certainly the best meat-free food I’ve ever eaten in a London restaurant. If I won the Euro­millions, I’d try (and fail, obviously) to employ Suntaramoophy and Kotecha. In the meantime, however, I’d probably settle for their cookbook. Can somebody make that happen, please?