Mooli's

After reading DJKneedriver's posts about the excellent value for money eats to be had in the Big Apple, I'm sort of ashamed to report that the Big Smoke cannot really compete. I'm happy to be proved wrong on this, but to my knowledge, essential eating cannot be reliably had for teh cheap.

BUT - we can get close. If you're like me, you definitely crave spicy indian food that is also easy to hold. The solution? Go to Mooli's.

Mooli's

50 Frith Street
London W1D 4SQ
020 7494 9075

http://www.moolis.com
@moolis

For this visit, I had a (spicy) World Cup special Lamb Bobotie Mini Mooli (£3.50), delicious lamb and egg tightly wrapped in hot roti. The 'classic' flavours are chicken, beef, pork, asparagus, paneer and the super-top #1 knockout, GOAT. These are accompanied by a wide variety of other fillings, such as potato, salsas and chutney's and just the right amount of crunchy salad leaves. A mooli is available in 2 sizes (mini mooli is pictured in this post), or in a nice cardboard salad box with the roti substituted for extra salad ingredients and seperate dressings.


Bobotie Mooli as a salad.

The Mooli

As it arrives it is like a beautiful gift waiting to be unwrapped, and unwrap it you must. You will not be able to stop yourself. As you tear off a strip of the foil, you're greeted with a heartily packed wrap, bursting with colour. The first bites are an explosion of flavour, every ingredient punches you right on the tongue - POW. If you're hungry this thing won't last long, but it is TASTE, TASTE, TASTE all the way down. When the world cup mooli goes back to the holding-pen, I can totally recommend the Goat mooli, packed with soft potato and chutney. Goat meat is kind of a rarity in the UK, and in the mooli it comes out beautifully tender, reminiscent of Moroccan tagine cooking.

There is only 1 downside:

Inevitable heartbreak: A finished Mooli.

Part of the charm of Mooli's is the unique stamp that everything in sight has; From the decor, fun colouring and weird posters, to the staff in the bright bright bright 'Mooli Madly Deeply' T's. This definitely extends to the food. Right there on the counter, ready to be served up, is a giant cooker of Dal (£1.50 a bowl, take THAT NEW YORK), deliciously crisp roasted pappadoms with a hot salsa, and crazy, mini-milk style, kulfi iced-creams. There are fun, bespoke, drinks on offer too - refreshing mango lassi (kind of like a light milk-shake), hot masala chai tea or a mind-bending Havana Club-injected mojito with either Guava, Lychee or Pomegranate with chilli's.

Mooli's is a really great place to sit and eat and drink for half an hour, and due to the care in which everything is presented, from boxes to wrappings, their food is also eminently transportable. A lovely treat to enjoy in the sunshine of soho. There are also weekly drinks offers for twitter followers, so follow them @moolis!

Just take it easy on those mojitos!