The only traditional thing about BiBi is who it’s named after. Two grandmothers, Kamal and Ranjana. After that it stops making sense in all the right ways – a kitchen open past midnight in a city that shuts early, hip-hop bubbling over the pass, fine-dining plates for whoever’s hungry at an hour London calls unreasonable. It’s for the late ones. The workers, the stragglers, the saucer-eyed. And for us.
London. The city that never sleeps. Except that it does, like that friend who’s already lassoed you with drool and nuzzled your shoulder before the plane’s taken off. It sleeps hard and it sleeps early – by 10pm the streets belong to very confused tourists still looking for Piccadilly Circus and that fox rustling in the overstuffed trash bins on Dean Street.
The livewire 24-hour city was promised by party songs and movies – by Pulp milling about in Bar Italia, by Lock, Stock’s all-night card games and the Britpop mythologizing of a place too cool to ever close its eyes for long. But this global city has a peculiar habit of shutting down early. Good food gets scarce after 9pm, Sunday grocery runs become a moot point, and even a standard weekend bar can call it a night before 2am.
It’s economics. Central London lost 15.6% of its licensed premises – about 540 closures, or one every two days – in the three years after March 2020. Staff are harder to find post-Brexit. Rent doesn’t drop. The cost of staying open late doesn’t justify the late-night cover most places would pull. So instead of fighting it, hospitality closed earlier. And the mindset stuck.
BiBi Follows A Different Schedule
But in the middle of Mayfair, BiBi follows a different schedule. Thank god. Or maybe thank Chet Sharma’s grandmas.
The restaurant exists because of those two women – Kamal and Ranjana. Both called bibis, which in Urdu doesn’t just mean grandmother but carries the weight of lady of the house. The kind of woman who holds things together, mostly through food.
Each tasting menu is named after one of them. And when you sit at BiBi – and you should sit at the counter, for the show and for the foretaste, smells reaching you three plates before the food does, so you’re already hungry for something you can’t see yet – you’re not eating Chet’s food. You’re eating what his family taught him. Even his grandfather gets in on the act, offering his recipe for Sharmaji’s Lahori Chicken, filtered through Chet’s years of L’Enclume and Moor Hall and Mugaritz.
The technique is contemporary. Precise and scientific – he read physics at Oxford, and it shows in the way a blend is built, each component measured, each interaction deliberate. But the soul is from Lahore, passed down by people who cooked not to win stars but to feed their family.
Something To Believe In
Although BiBi runs on those set chef menus, it’s started offering BiBi Lates to cater to the unsatiated late-night crowd. Hello, London, we’re still here, starving and saucer-eyed and in need of salvation.
Lates are substantial dishes served at the same caliber as the hard-to-book Chef Selection menus. The cocktails keep flowing like London’s entire early-closing issue is someone else’s problem. And the kitchen’s still firing at midnight while the rest of the city’s already home with a cup of cocoa, probably catching up on Strictly or something.
BiBi Is Full Of Groovy Individuals
Nothing could be more important than being here. Because Chet Sharma is anything but your average chef, with an array of passions extending far beyond the kitchen. You might know that he staged for The Fat Duck. Maybe not that he initially got into culinary arts as a side gig to his studies, or that he holds a Masters in neurology as well as physics. He’s a DJ who opened for Rihanna and Kanye, and that ear – what note goes where, and when – runs the room as much as it runs the record. He’s a momma’s boy. And, obviously, a nanna’s boy.
The cozy 30-seat restaurant radiates his persona, as well as his team of bouncy and groovy individuals who embody the ethos meant for BiBi. Hip-hop gurgles over the pass. Digital Underground welcomed the first martini. Soul II Soul skipped along while I savored the impossible 20+ ingredients in a single Mangalori Scallop. Mos Def provided a pep talk during the talked-about CHICKEN, and A Tribe Called Quest offered a groovy sendoff alongside my Penicillin nightcap.
His eponymous naming nod to both his grandmothers is the only thing traditional about this joint.
Lates, Mixed And Matched As You See Fit
BiBi is buzzing throughout the day, and maybe hard to come by for a booking, or perhaps hard to commit to with the dedicated Chef menu that takes you through a 6-course lunch or 8-course dinner, for £65 and £125 respectively.
But Lates is a new ballgame. A menu to order dish by dish, mix and match as you see fit. Sixteen items all a-la-carte, bite-sized – or at least bite-worthy and totally date-worthy, non embarrassing, non drippy, easy-to-share, not self-conscious don’t-want-to-eat-this-in-public fare – ideally suited to a substantial meal later in the evening. The hulking Sam Frost 60-day Aged Wagyu Nihari is the pinnacle. Alongside a drink, of course. Lates items run between £4 and £38 for the Green Chilli Monkfish, the Wagyu an exception at £85, and the signature cocktails all around £20.
The first offer of Wookey Hole Cheese Papad comes with mint chutney, cultured cream, and a tapioca-based cheese paste – steamed, chilled, rested, dehydrated and rested again, then deep fried.
And then the chicken. Although it might be time to call it by its full name – Sharmaji’s Lahori Chicken & Yakhni Pulao. Herb-fed from Lincolnshire, impossibly succulent, served with cashew and yoghurt whey and smoked grilled peas. It may sound simple and standard. It is the reason BiBi moves into your mind, puts its feet up and reads unhurriedly through the Sunday papers the next day, supplements and all.
BiBi Is Decisively Spicy And Refreshingly Summer Ready
The chamba chukh sweetbread runs it a close second. Decisively spicy, intricately prepared and refreshingly summer-ready. Chet poaches, peels, and presses the veal until cold, marinates it overnight, then fries it twice in BiBi’s signature blend and glazes it with honey. Each dish is complex, sometimes carrying more than fifteen spices at once, dropped off by the team like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal. Indian food like it’s never tasted before.
The cocktails are worth a mention entirely on their own. The martini, my first order at any bar that serves one, is not always fair, but it’s always telling. BiBi’s take on the classic, the Curry Leaf Martini, is clean with a suggestion of mango and finished with drops of lemon oil. My date is adamant about the merits of her Kaji Lemon Lagerita, with mezcal, pilsner and elderflower, and we share sips.
Head of beverage Willem Powell tells me I need the Penicillin next. Not my usual order, but tea-steeped brandy and masala spices ups the ante and I could drink these all summer. I’m having pre-nostalgia for my favorite cocktails in London and already fantasizing about my order next evening, when I’ll be back for an actual date.
BiBi is just a short walk off Oxford Street, smack dab in the middle of the mayhem but seemingly just outside of it, ignoring the surrounding noise. Bring your ad-hoc date, your actual partner, or even just yourself. You’re gonna have a good time, whatever time it is.
Because BiBi really is something to believe in.
