Company Bahadur

Headed by an Indian, a store in London sells nostalgia

About 435 years after the East India Company was first established, it’s more than a little surreal to see its doors opened for custom in London’s Conduit Street. The second coming of John Company is courtesy the efforts of a Marwari from Kolkata, entrepreneur Sanjay Mehta, who has reinvented it as a gourmet food store after a 135-year lull in its fortunes.

That’s quite a historical reversal. The company originally built by British traders and merchants, involved in the export of spices and teas from the Orient, competing with the Dutch for supremacy, is now selling luxury teas, coffees, chocolates, jams, chutneys and biscuits back to the English, headed by an Indian trader.

But that’s not what makes the East India Company special. For foodies, it’s worth making a special side-trip here, just to get a sense of how the Raj has been reinvented for a modern palate. One of the first things I try is a cheese-and-mustard biscuit — the texture more shortbread than nankhatai, the taste wonderfully sharp, as though they used a traditional kasandi rather than a Dijon-style mustard.

The suggested accompaniments are a chilli jam — sweet, and as the store manager suggests, just spicy enough to make a great accompaniment for cold meats and salamis — and the store’s trademark Bulldog Mustard, part of a line of products that lean heavily on the use of chilli and peppercorns.

The selection of teas is impressive, but I have to say that the average Indian tea store will do just as fine a job, and some of the stores in Kolkata or even in Delhi’s Lodi Colony market source more rare and hard-to-find local tea plantation blends. It’s the chocolates that are quirky, and irresistible. I ask whether there’s much demand for the “mukhwa” chocolate slabs, which sprinkle the classic Gujarati after-meal mouth freshener judiciously through bars of 70 per cent proof cacao chocolates — just dark enough and sweet enough to act as a foil to the aniseed in the mukhwas.

The red peppercorn chocolates are an impressive twist on the chilli chocolates that have become ubiquitous (even Lindt does chilli chocolate slabs these days) — and are considerably more fiery. There’s an intriguing chai masala chocolate, though my prediction is that this one will remain a novelty taste.

After years of sourcing biscuits from local cities — Pune’s shortbread biscuits, Nahoum’s ginger biscuits — it feels almost disloyal buying some of East India Company’s wares, and very strange to be carrying back Indian-inspired recipes from London to Delhi, but it’s irresistible. I pass on the apple chutney and the mango chutney, but for those who’re interested, it’s worth noting that these seem to be updated versions of recipes you’d find in Mrs Beeton and Flora Annie Steele, two of the most celebrated writers of cookery books in the days of the Raj.

And there are pre-Christmas — Diwali by another name? — hampers for those with large pockets, where assortments of spices, mustards and pickles can be packaged in EIC’s elegant, gold-mohur stamped paper.

I leave with the taste of a previous era, updated for today’s age of designer mustards and bespoke chocolates, keeping me company. The first invasion of British cuisine was conducted via homesick Sylhetis running Bangladeshi takeaways; the second assault was conducted via the chicken tikka masala and the microwaveable vindaloo. And now, with Indian gourmet restaurants offering “Indian tapas” (think papri chaat reworked as an amuse bouche), I love it that the East India Company is seducing the West with sophisticated versions of the recipes that once soothed the choler of British Army colonels. It’s a great way to sell nostalgia, and to bring a little bit of India into the gourmet food aisles.

[Nilanjana S Roy is a Delhi-based freelance writer]