The Cinnamon Club Cookbook

Iqbal Wahhab was a distinguished food journalist and restaurant publicist who famously edited Tandoori Magazine and claimed that most Indian restaurant staff were 'miserable gits'. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was sacked from his editorial post and so he decided to put his (and other people's) money where his mouth was and set about creating the greatest Indian restaurant in the world using the talents of India's leading young chef, Vivek Singh. The rest is the stuff of restaurant legend.

Vivek Singh is one of Britain's best-known Indian chefs. He has been executive chef of The Cinnamon Club since its launch in 2001. He was classically trained in India with the world-famous Oberoi Group. Vivek is a master of Indian cuisine, but he also believes that it should not remain static, but be enhanced and evolved by outside influences. His food, therefore, is a perfect blend of authentic Indian spicing and flavours and modern Western styles and techniques. In 2003, along with the restaurant's founder, Iqbal Wahhab, Vivek wrote The Cinnamon Club Cookbook. In 2006, he wrote The Cinnamon Club Seafood Cookbook, and in 2008 came Curry: Classic and Contemporary. By this time Vivek was not only an award-winning author, but also one of the most respected chefs in the UK, and one of the most recognisable faces of Indian cuisine on TV too. 2008 was also the year that a second restaurant, Cinnamon Kitchen, just off Liverpool Street in London, also opened its doors. Vivek is one of the most innovative Indian chefs at work in the world today. He appears regularly on television, with many appearances on the BBC's flagship cookery programme, Saturday Kitchen.