Hankies (Bar, Restaurant)

Top 10 things to know about Hankie’s Café:

1) Afternoon tea is a British institution and one of the best. Finger sandwiches, cakes and wonderful cups of tea bring the whole event together. You may think you’ve tried all the best afternoon teas in London. You’d be wrong.

2) Hankie’s Café on Shaftesbury Avenue combines North Indian and British cuisine into one tidy offering. You arrive on a Saturday afternoon, famished. Grasping your tickets, you’ve put your foot down and demanded food before the West End show begins.

3) Enter Hankie’s Café: minimalist, mostly wood, benches and a well-stocked bar. You chat idly as you wait for the afternoon tea. Delhi style tapas is Hankie’s claim to fame but today it’s about spiced scones and jam, chicken sandwiches and cardamom.

4) With a flourish, shelves bearing savoury and sweet titbits are placed on the table.

5) You grab the chicken Hankie’s roll, dip it in the vibrant mint sauce and shove it in your mouth, savouring the spicy, juicy meat. You then move on to the chicken wings which are flavoured with a balance of sweet, sour and spicy.

6) By now you look crazy with a samosa-esque parcel of meat in one hand and a grilled keema sandwich in the other. You could care more, but you don’t.

7) Time for the sweet. The Gulab Jaman crème brulee is incomparable. The creamy sweetness of the small milk cake, heady hits of spice, and the buttery custard take your palate from savoury to sweet instantly.

8) Spoon clinks on glass, signifying the end of the brulee. You grab a ladoo strudel, the striking mix of crumbly sweetness with punches of syrup and nut. You “wash” the strudel down with a shot of Kheer – an extremely saccharine milky rice pudding.

9) You’ve inhaled these delights and not even tried the actual scones yet. Slice them open, smell the warm aroma of Lucknawi spices, slather with clotted cream and cover in spiced jam. So much flavour for an afternoon tea! You can’t stop eating and marvelling at the sheer brilliance.

10) You notice a large rectangular box on the table which houses sugar of different sizes. Add a few lumps to the ginger and cardamom tea and sit back, a full, happy and suitably spicy individual. Saturday afternoon never tasted so good. Time for the show!...read more