Luxury Indian dining concept, Colonel Saab has launched the month-long Kebab Festival, which will run until the end of July at the
award-winning, Holborn destination.

A special menu has been created for the festival, which includes delicacies such as the Tunday Kebab, which originates from Lucknow in northern India and the Shikari Raan, a goat kebab recipe developed by ancient hunters who would marinate the meat in forest herbs before cooking on a hot stone.

Other offerings, such as the Venison Soola Boti from Rajistan in northern India and and the Tandoori Roasted Tangri – made using chicken legs and grilled in a Tandoor oven – showcase the unique ways that India has evolved the flavours of the traditional kebab.

Stand-out dishes include the Meen Pollithathu – a Kerala style kebab made from fish wrapped in banana leaves for cooking – and the Jheenga Dum Nisha, which uses fresh tiger prawns simmered in saffron sauce, flavoured with cinnamon and cardamom.
Colonel Saab owner, Roop Partap Choudhary says: “We launched this restaurant to celebrate India’s authentic and diverse cuisines – many of which were previously unknown to people in the West.

“Kebabs are an important part of that and we wanted to show how India has taken the kebab and transformed it into something quite unique, using our own spices, ingredients and recipes.

“We are so excited to welcome new and returning customers to Colonel Saab during our Kebab Festival and to introduce this cuisine to a new audience.”

While the cuisine may have originated from Turkey and the Middle East and dates back as far as the 1200s, it has a long and celebrated history in India, having been brought to the continent by Afghan invaders in the same century.

And they became so popular that explorer, Ibn Battuta recorded that Indians would eat kebabs for breakfast in the mid 1300s.
Today, the cuisine is loved all over the continent, with the vast differences in available spices and ingredients paving the way for hundreds of regional variations in the way kebabs are prepared and served – many of which will be available for Colonel Saab’s customers to try during the next four weeks.

The art-festooned restaurant was created by award-winning entrepreneur Roop Partap Choudhary as a “love letter” to his family and India.

The modern Indian restaurant has made its home in the elegant, former Holborn Town Hall and the menu and museum-worthy artworks are a homage to Choudhary’s travels across India with his mother, Mrs Binny Choudhary and father, Colonel Manbeer, who was given the honorific name ‘Colonel Saab’ – shared by the restaurant – while serving in the Indian Army.

Innovative hotelier, Choudhary is passionate about delivering the true tastes of India he enjoyed on childhood adventures around the country with his parents. The extensive menu is inspired by places Colonel Saab was stationed and Choudhary spent a year retracing his father’s footsteps across India by train, bus and car with Indian food royalty, Karen Anand (Dishoom) to curate contemporary twists on dishes passed down through the generations of people they met, with many regional specialities appearing for the first time on a London menu, alongside some of Anand’s signature dishes.
Dining at Colonel Saab is also a feast for the eyes, with a treasure trove of eclectic Indian art and artefacts collected by his family on their travels, lovingly brought to the space under challenging conditions.
Colonel Saab’s Kebab Festival runs from June 20 – July 30 at the restaurant in Holborn Town Hall, London