Celebrating 100 Years at Veeraswamy with a £60 Centenary Set Menu
The Centenary Menu: four courses for £60, lunch and dinner, seven days a week
Veeraswamy has been serving the royal cuisines of India above Regent Street since 1926, and this year marks its centenary. To celebrate, the restaurant has brought together a four-course menu featuring dishes revived from its historic menus, with each course accompanied by its own story.
We visited for lunch to try the Centenary Menu, which is available at £60 for four courses at both lunch and dinner, seven days a week.
Lunch above Regent Street
Above Regent Street, Veeraswamy’s dining room has an elegant, richly detailed feel, with framed paintings lining the walls and coloured glass lanterns casting a warm glow across the room. Green upholstered chairs surround tables dressed in crisp white linen, while amber glassware, silver serving pieces and a crystal chandelier bring a sense of occasion to the setting.
The Centenary Menu card is placed on the table and includes the history behind each dish, while the restaurant’s silverware is stamped with its name and founding year, 1926.
The service throughout our visit was attentive and warm, with Manoj Kumar providing exemplary service from start to finish. His knowledge of the menu and the stories behind the dishes added another layer to the experience, particularly as each course arrived with its own connection to the restaurant’s history.
What we ate
The Centenary Menu begins with Anglo-Indian mulligatawny soup, taken from Veeraswamy’s original 1926 menu. Served in a small cup, it arrived golden and gently spiced, with a warmth that made for a lovely start to the meal. It was delicate rather than heavy, leaving plenty of room for what followed.
The second course, Country Captain with roghni mini naan, was a particular favourite. Tender chicken on the bone comes in a rich, tomato-red sauce, finished with slivered nuts and fresh coriander, with soft, freshly made naans alongside. The combination of the deeply flavoured sauce and pillowy naan made this a dish we were very happy to linger over.
The menu card tells us that Veeraswamy founder Edward Palmer taught Country Captain to ladies attending his cookery classes in London, while roghni naan appeared on some of the restaurant’s earliest menus.
For the third course, there is a choice between Ceylon prawn curry and Hyderabadi lamb salan, both served with naan or basmati rice.
The Ceylon prawn curry looks back to 1959, when Veeraswamy’s menu included dishes from India, Pakistan, Malaya and Ceylon, while the Hyderabadi lamb salan featured on the 1947 menu.
We went for the lamb salan, and it was the dish that really stayed with us. A lamb shank arrives in a scalloped silver bowl over a warmer, surrounded by a deep, glossy salan and finished with slivered nuts, dried chilli and coriander. The lamb was wonderfully tender, while the richness of the curry worked beautifully with the fragrant basmati rice served alongside.
Dessert is the thandai kulfi, a saffron and almond cream set in a fluted mould. It arrives surrounded by rings of saffron, with cubes of jelly, pistachio and a touch of gold leaf.
The kulfi was an elegant finish to the meal, with the fragrant saffron and almond coming through beautifully against the cool, creamy texture. The pistachio and jelly add little bursts of texture, while the gold leaf gives the final course the celebratory finish you would hope for from a centenary menu.
The Centenary Menu
The four-course menu is served at lunch and dinner every day, with a choice of two curries for the third course.
A century of Veeraswamy
The Centenary Menu brings together four courses from different points in Veeraswamy’s history, from the original 1926 menu through to dishes served in the decades that followed.
At £60 for four courses, it offers the chance to experience some of the restaurant’s historic dishes while dining in the Mayfair restaurant where that story has unfolded for a hundred years.
Piccadilly Circus is around two minutes away on foot, with Oxford Circus and Green Park each around ten minutes. With the menu served every day at lunch and dinner, it works for a long lunch in the West End or an evening before or after the theatre.
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