Gunpowder and Madame D’s Team Will Open Gul and Sepoy This September

The team behind two Spitalfields restaurants — Gunpowder and Madame D’s — are opening a third site Gul and Sepoy, over two floors, focusing on both rustic and royal Indian cuisine. It is their third opening in less than two years.

Husband and wife team Harneet and Devina Baweja will open with executive Chef Nirmal Save in September on Commercial Street — within walking distance of their two existing restaurants. Gul and Sepoy will, they say, draw on influences from Punjab and Rajasthan, to Maharashtra and Kerala on the south western Indian coastline.

Gul and Sepoy [Official Photo]

The Gul part of the menu will focus on dishes inspired by the lavish banquets of the royal Raj palaces in northwestern India. Three birds awadhi korma; jackfruit and walnut-ke-sheek and kid goat raan with pickled root vegetables, for sharing. Desserts will include a walnut fudge with baked Alaska and salted caramel.

Sepoy, meanwhile, will offer rustic, provincial-style dishes based on the food cooked and eaten by soldiers of the old Indian army — designed in respect of their always being on the move. Dishes will include: masala wild rabbit terrine with celeriac and fig; potted coorgi pig’s head; and wild berries and lavender kheer, “championing nose-to-tail cooking and drawing on the food Nirmal grew up on at his family home in Maharashtra.”

Harneet said: “There’s something really romantic and beautiful about the cooking of the Raj-days of old and we’ve found that those flavours and dishes harmonise particularly well with the more rustic cooking you’d commonly find in historic tales of Sepoys (soldiers) travelling through colonial India.”

Gul and Sepoy will feature a large oak panelled bar at the entrance. It will be paired back throughout, but “the upstairs dining room will denote a touch of luxury, in a nod to the decadence of North India’s ancient royal palaces, including intricate wooden features and large marble feasting tables.”

Gul and Sepoy will open in September at 65 Commercial Street, London E1 6BD @GulandSepoy