Punjabi Restaurant Dip in Brilliant Opens on Fulham Road on 20 February

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New venture for Southall chef Dipna Anand takes over site vacated by Kishmish

It is the first solo venture for chef Dipna Anand, who has made her name at the award winning Brilliant in Southall. Brilliant is a family run restaurant which was founded in 1975 by her father Gulu and uncle Kewal after they came to London from Kenya, where their father, Bishen Dass Anand had run the first Brilliant restaurant since the fifties.

The restaurant on Western Road in Southall started out small with just 30 seats but since then has proved so successful it has been extended seven times and now seats up to 220 people. It also has a private banqueting suite, an outside catering business, a cookery school and sells its own brands of pickles and chutneys.

Dipna says Dip in Brilliant will be an informal restaurant serving up to 70 people. Guests will eat from a thali (a metal round platter) and the menu will be a condensed version of Brilliant's menu, offering dishes such as chicken tikka, papri chaat, chicken tikka masala, tandoori mixed grill and biryanis.

This site on Fulham Road has been home to Indian restaurants for many years, most recently Kishmish and before that the East India, and people living in this eastern part of SW6 have been without a local Indian restaurant since Kishmish moved out in 2016.

The site was subsequently sold early last year by estate agent Amber & Co, who said the buyers paid close to the asking price of £5,000,000.

The site was sold with potential for redevelopment into ten new flats, but after the sale a spokesman for the agent said the new owners, rumoured to be Chelsea Football Club, intended to open an upmarket French restaurant on the site.

Instead however, Dipna Anand has taken a two to three year lease on the premises, saying: "We want to test how we do in central London."

Prevous incumbent Kishmish meanwhile is now a delivery only restaurant serving Fulham and surrounding area from its current base in based in Greyhound Road, but serving the entire area.

February 8, 2018