Here’s What to Order at Brigadiers and What to Skip
Here’s What to Order at Brigadiers and What to Skip
Brigadiers is big, bold and expensive enough that ordering badly hurts
Brigadiers is the kind of London restaurant where you need a plan.
Not a military plan, although given the whole Indian-mess-bar theme, that might be appropriate. More of a tactical ordering strategy. Because the Brigadiers menu is enormous, the prices are high, and if you walk in hungry with a large group and no idea of what to order, you may find yourself surrounded by way too much food, with a bill to match.
Naturally, this is more or less what happens to us. Which is why I want you to order better than we did.
Quick info on Brigadiers
- Restaurant: Brigadiers
- Where: Bloomberg Arcade, near Cannon Street
- Cuisine: Indian barbecue, kebabs, grills, curries and biryanis
- Must order: Lamb ribeye kebab skewer, chicken tikka butter masala, beef shin and bone marrow biryani, tawa prawn biryani
- Skip: Crab samosas, lamb chops, mixed grill sizzler, bread basket
- Price: We paid £540 for 6 people with soft drinks, so around £90 per person
- Good to know: The Brigadiers menu is very easy to over-order from. Portions can be generous, prices climb quickly, and the showiest dishes aren’t always the best ones.
- Halal: chicken and lamb are halal
- Details: Party of 6. Meal paid for independently.
Find out more in the Brigadiers restaurant review below.
The Brigadiers menu is where confidence goes to die
Set inside Bloomberg Arcade, Brigadiers London is a polished, modern Indian barbecue restaurant from the JKS group, inspired by the mess bars of India where people gather to eat, drink and socialise. Inside, it’s all red leather, dark wood, big tables, and sports screens.
The food, when it hits, really hits. But the trick is knowing what to order.
The Brigadiers menu is sprawling, flitting between snacks, chaat, rolls, pao, sizzlers, kebabs, chops, ribs, curries, biryanis, breads, sides and desserts. Expect to feel overwhelmed, and have the occasional bout of decision fatigue.
And because of the high prices, you really want to make the right decisions about what (and how much) to order. We dined as a group of 6 and made a bunch of mistakes when it came to ordering lunch from the Brigadiers menu.
So strap in and let’s go over what to order, and what you might want to skip.
Pappadums are a useful little opening
We start with pappadums and chutney, because we’re hungry and need something immediate to crunch while making increasingly reckless menu decisions.
They do the job nicely.
There’s a good selection of pappadums, the chutneys are pleasant enough, if not very memorable, and everyone gets something to nibble while waiting for the serious food to arrive.
The crab samosas are the easiest skip
Originally, we plan to order the goat samosas, but we’re told they’ve been replaced with crab samosas.
This sounds promising – more interesting, even. I’m easily seduced by a seafood samosa, mostly because I like the idea of it more than I have liked the reality of most versions I’ve eaten.
The restaurant kindly makes the portion up to six pieces for our table, rather than the usual four, with the extra cost added on.
Unfortunately, the samosas are a bit meh.
The pastry is crisp and neat, but the filling doesn’t really say much. If nobody had told me they were crab, I wouldn’t have guessed. There is no real sweetness, no deep shellfish flavour, no little spark that makes you think, yes, this is why we are paying restaurant money for tiny parcels of food.
The lamb ribeye kebab skewers are the lamb order to make
Thankfully, the lamb ribeye kebab skewer at Brigadiers pulls things sharply back on track.
Think of thick metal skewers threaded with juicy, fatty lamb, cooked until smoky, savoury and deeply moreish. It has that lovely layered texture where some bites are tender and meaty, while others catch a little more fat and char.
Everyone at the table likes this.
It also makes the lamb chops on the mixed grill look a little unnecessary by comparison. Those are thicker, drier and much less exciting. So if you’re choosing one lamb dish from the Brigadiers menu, make it the ribeye kebab skewer.
The paneer is delicious, but £20 paneer makes me blink
The achari paneer shashlik is another strong dish.
The paneer is wonderfully soft, almost wobbling on the skewer, with a lovely smoky edge from the grill and enough tangy achari flavour to keep each bite lively.
But it costs £20.
And I know we’re in the City, with City prices. But still. £20 for grilled paneer is OTT.
The mixed grill sizzler looks dramatic, but I’d skip it
Then comes the mixed grill sizzler. It arrives smoking and sizzling, loaded with guinea fowl reshmi kebabs, methi chicken chops, double tandoori lamb chops and tandoori masala jheenga (prawns).
On paper, it sounds like the obvious thing to order for our group. In reality, it’s not a good order.
The menu says the platter serves two, but that only really makes sense if you’re ordering it as your main (and sole) event. If you’re sharing several dishes across the table, one platter could easily serve three or four people.
We order two mixed grills between six of us, and that is absolutely too much. We don’t even finish the first platter properly before the second one starts looking like an expensive mistake (£75 per platter).
As for the actual eating, it’s mixed in every sense.
The prawns are the best part, being butterflied, juicy, smoky and wonderfully delicious. The chicken is pleasant enough, though not especially memorable. The lamb chops are the weakest link for me, being a little dry, too thickly cut, and nowhere near as good as the lamb ribeye kebab skewers.
So while the mixed grill looks like the big-ticket order, I wouldn’t get it again.
Next time, I’d skip the platter entirely and order more selectively from the kebab skewer sections instead. At Brigadiers, the best order isn’t always the one that arrives with the most smoke.
The chicken tikka butter masala is the curry you want
The chicken tikka butter masala is a lovely thing. It’s creamy, buttery, deeply spiced and generously loaded with chicken, and you can’t help but keep coming back to the bowl, even when you’re stuffed.
And at £30, it should be generous.
With everything else on the table, one portion is easily enough for six people to share. I definitely don’t think we needed another curry alongside it, because this does the job beautifully by itself.
This is where the price at Brigadiers feels easier to swallow. It’s not cheap, but the masala feels complete, confident and satisfying. You don’t feel short-changed.
The biryanis are the reason I’d go back
For me, the biryanis are the strongest reason to return to Brigadiers London.
The dum beef shin and bone marrow biryani is excellent. It arrives capped with pastry, which always makes a biryani feel like a present. Underneath, the rice is fragrant and rich, with plenty of soft beef shin and that deep, fatty savouriness from the bone marrow running through it.
If I’m comparing it to other London biryanis, I still think the one at Oudh 1722 is better.
But this is still fabulous.
Then comes the tawa prawn biryani, which has a completely different personality. Where the beef biryani is deep and savoury, this is brighter and more lifted. The prawns are generous, and the fried curry leaves bring a freshness that works beautifully with the seafood.
I wouldn’t choose between them – I’d order both again.
PS – This is also why the bread basket feels so unnecessary. When you have two scrumptious biryanis on the table, the breads have nowhere useful to go.
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The bread basket is obsolete
The bread basket includes one chilli cheese naan, one onion and coriander kulcha, and one pudina lacha paratha.
It’s fine.
The chilli cheese naan is the best of the three, but fine is not really enough when the table is already groaning under the weight of grills, curry and biryani.
This is exactly how the Brigadiers menu gets you. Everything sounds like it will complete the meal. Then suddenly the meal has completed you instead.
If you’re ordering biryani, skip the bread.
Mango lassi, yes. Masala chai, maybe not
At this point we’re way too full for dessert.
Instead, we end with mango lassi and masala chai.
The mango lassi is excellent. It’s fresh-tasting, smooth and not overly sweet, which is exactly what I want after a meal this rich.
The masala chai is less impressive.
It tastes more like a coffee shop chai latte than something properly brewed with whole spices. Not unpleasant, but not what I expect from a restaurant operating at this price level. It has that slightly powdery, mixed-with-hot-water quality rather than the depth of something made with care.
Final thoughts on Brigadiers
I like Brigadiers, and I’d go back.
But next time I’d order very differently.
Really, that’s the whole point of this Brigadiers restaurant review. The restaurant is fun, the menu is exciting, and the best dishes are worth eating. But the weaker dishes are too expensive to shrug off, and the showiest options aren’t the smartest ones.
So if you want a good time, stick with the skewers, kebabs and the biryanis. And definitely end your meal with a juicy mango lassi.
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Brigadiers restaurant review
Address – 1-5 Bloomberg Arcade, London EC4N 8AR
Nearest Tube – Mansion House
