Tiffin boxes are disc-shaped metal containers designed to convey lunch from home to workplace in the steaming, teeming metropolis of Bombay. Tiffinbites, on the other hand, is a restaurant designed to convey the magnificent grub of Bombay to the equally teeming albeit not-so steaming metropolis of London.

The Venue
Tiffinbites at Jubilee Place in Canary Wharf is a loud, bright space: its wooden benches are packed with a multicultural crowd for lunch, while Bollywood films play on flat-screen televisions and pop music blares (slightly too loudly) away in the background. The walls continue the Bollywood theme, emblazoned as they are with murals depicting scenes from the cinema.

The Atmosphere
The be-suited workers of Canary Wharf have clearly taken Tiffinbites to their hearts. It’s a busy place: those eating from the long wooden tables and seated on the benches that make up much of the restaurant’s floor space are often elbow to elbow. To the side, the restaurant’s lucky few sit in splendid isolation in comfy booths.

The Food
This is not a complex menu – don’t expect 80 different dishes (in reality, there’s five with minor alterations) like you might find in a suburban high street Indian restaurant. What you get is a Bombay-style lunch: rice, daal perhaps and a curry, served in those metal tiffin boxes.

First, though, you might fancy a starter, which are just a few quid each. The Allo Papdi Chaat is a sticky muddle of potatoes, chickpeas, onions and thick, biscuity India crisps: it’s fresh, light and generously proportioned. Even better are the Shammi Kebab, which are softly spicy lamb patties served with a thin but rich dipping sauce.

There are about ten main courses to choose from at about £7.00 each. Tiffinbites employs a spice rating (from 1 to 4) to let you know how hot each dish is – and while they claim that eating a dish with three chillies entitles you to be called Iron Gut, it’s really not that hot. The Spicy Josh (£7.95) for example, rates at three chillies but its only pleasantly hot at most – not that that is a criticism.

The aforementioned is a medium-sour lamb dish, thick, tomatoey and with a slight piquancy. It’s superb. With it comes a green pea masala, which is slightly bland (the menu claims that it is lightly cooked with mustard seeds, coriander, mango powder, turmeric and spices, but the overwhelming flavour is peas) and fluffy pilau rice.

Also recommended is the Saucy Jeera, which, despite its name, will not make off-colour remarks about your partner’s cleavage. What it will do is cause a pleasing sensation of contentment: this is a creamy, buttery dish, lightly spiced (just one chili, heat fans). Almost as good is the daal saag which accompanies it: it’s thick like a homemade vegetable soup, adequately spiced and beautifully filling.

If that’s not enough to fill you up, there’s a variety of soft, buttery naans, of which the chilli and coriander is recommended – not only because it is delicious, but because for each sale Tiffinbites makes a donation to the Hebron Children's Home in Southern India for disadvantaged children.

And then there’s pudding. Indian puddings are not, it must be emphasized, for the uninitiated: they are relentlessly sweet, sickly even. The gulab jamun is no exception: it looks like a pair of deep-fried testicles in golden syrup and tastes sweet, sweet, sweet.

The Drink
There’s a short wine list, from which the grapefruit and lemon-flavoured Tuatara Bay (a New Zealand sauvignon blanc) stands out. The Masala chai is milky but refreshing and there’s a host of cocktails (including one called the Bollywood) for those who demand fruit in everything that they drink.

The Final Word
This is not the best Indian food in town but in terms of value for money – and speed of service – it is very, very hard to beat. Highly recommended.

venue information venue map view london review user reviews (2)