What to Order at Gunpowder Soho, and What to Skip

Gunpowder Soho has reached an awkward age for a London restaurant: old enough to be respected, old enough to be overlooked, and no longer new enough to live on hype alone.

Nearly a decade after opening, it is no longer the table people brag about getting. At lunch, there are empty seats to prove it.

That makes this a good moment to return. Not for nostalgia, but for a practical question: in a Soho full of newer, louder names, is Gunpowder still worth booking?

It’s not perfect, but overall, yes. The best dishes still hit hard, the portions are unusually generous for central London, and the prices feel fairer than much of the neighbourhood. But the menu is not uniformly strong. So here’s what to order, and what to skip at Gunpowder Soho.

Quick info on Gunpowder Soho

• Restaurant: Gunpowder
• Location: Soho
• Come for: regional Indian small plates
• Must order: Maa’s Kashmiri lamb chops, CPC prawn toast
• Skip: tandoori sea bass
• Portions: generous, order less than you think
• Vibe: cosy, relaxed, confident

Find out more in the full Gunpowder Soho restaurant review below.

10 years and a lot of change later

A decade on, and while Gunpowder has stayed mostly the same, the London restaurant scene has massively changed.

When the restaurant opened, its small-plates format and swagger felt fresher. Now London is full of restaurants built around scarcity, hype, and social-media velocity.

Gunpowder’s appeal is different now. It feels mature and settled. Less urgent, perhaps, but also less exhausting.

The space at Gunpowder Soho

The room still has the feeling of a place that knows what it is: compact and informal in a way that suits the food. Service is brisk but warm, with dishes arriving at a good pace.

It feels more like a dependable Soho standby than a polished special-occasion destination.

Cassava, but not as you know it

We start with the house-made cassava crisps with curry leaf masala. They’re sliced thin, fried until brittle, and evenly seasoned, with a fragrant dip on the side.

They’re well made, but I’m not convinced crisps are the best use of cassava. I miss the chew, sweetness and slightly sticky depth you get from proper cassava chips. These are elegant rather than craveable – a pleasant opener, but not a reason to come here.

The decade long reign of the venison doughnut

The venison doughnut has now been on the menu long enough to risk feeling like a relic. It isn’t. The soft shell gives way to dry-spiced venison keema, while sev adds crunch and tamarind cuts through with acidity.

It still works because the sweet, savoury, and textural elements remain tightly balanced. But it no longer steals the meal.

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Come for the prawn toast

The CPC prawn toast is the best thing we eat all meal. Three golden mini sandwiches arrive deeply crisp and generously filled, rich with prawn but not heavy.

A punchy dipping sauce ties everything together. It is playful without feeling gimmicky, and the one dish I would come back specifically to order again.

Don’t overlook the saag paneer at Gunpowder

The saag with tandoori paneer is homely in the best sense.

Soft triangles of paneer sit in creamy spinach, flecked with spice. The paneer has that slight squidge that good paneer should, being milky and substantial without turning to rubber. It’s warming, deeply savoury, and confidently done.

The lamb chops are the must order

If you order one thing, make it the lamb chops. They arrive lacquered in a spiced yoghurt marinade, lightly charred at the edges and properly juicy within.

The seasoning is the key: warm spices bloom gradually rather than hitting all at once, which gives each bite real depth. These are among the best lamb chops I’ve had in London.

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A nicely done soft shell crab

The Karwari soft-shell crab is delicately battered and properly crisp, with gentle seasoning that lets the crab stay at the centre of the dish.

Its problem is portioning. It feels slightly too small to share between more than two people, but slightly too much for one person to want alone. Good cooking, awkward format.

Less successful is the tandoori sea bass

The one weak link in our meal is the tandoori sea bass.

It’s served butterflied open, covered in a dressing. It looks the part, but the eating is where it fails.

There’s something about the texture of the fish that I’m not loving. The flesh is spongy and slightly waterlogged, without the clean flake you want from a dish like this.

It’s not all bad though. The dressing is lovely, and the samphire pakora on the side is brilliant, being salty, crisp, and inventive. But neither can rescue the fish itself.

Unseasonably generous portions

Food ups and downs aside, one of the best things about Gunpowder is the portion size of dishes, which trend to the more generous side. 

Because the restaurant opened about a decade ago and the menu hasn’t dramatically shifted, the plate sizes feel frozen in time. Meanwhile, the rest of London has slowly shrunk portions or inflated prices.

And because I didn’t realise this about the portions before ordering, we end up with too much food. Dessert becomes impossible.

In an era where you often leave restaurants slightly underfed, this feels refreshing.

Why isn’t Gunpowder Soho more busy?

As we eat, making our way through a range of delicious plates, I glance around and wonder why Gunpowder Soho isn’t more full.

The food is good and the prices are fair for central London. The cooking is mostly confident.

But perhaps this is the current reality. A handful of hyper-viral restaurants are booked out for weeks, while many very solid places operate well below capacity.

If you want a good Indian meal in Soho without fighting for a reservation, Gunpowder is quietly waiting.

Overall, lunch at Gunpowder Soho is better than I expected

The prawn toast and lamb chops are genuinely excellent, the venison doughnut still deserves its place on the menu, and the saag paneer is more memorable than it first appears. Only the sea bass feels like a clear miss.

Gunpowder Soho may no longer be the most fashionable booking in town, but it still delivers bold, confident cooking.

Just order slightly less than you think you need. For two people, I would build a meal around the prawn toast, lamb chops, venison doughnut, and one vegetable dish, then pause before ordering more. Gunpowder’s portions are larger than current Soho norms, and the easiest mistake here is assuming you need one extra plate.

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Disclosure: We were invited to review Gunpowder.

Gunpowder Soho restaurant review
Address – 20 Greek St, London W1D 4DU
Nearest Tube – Piccadilly Circus