Railway Lamb Curry and Jalebi Custard Just Got Their Own Restaurant in Bengaluru
Cooke Town soft-launches at Renaissance Bengaluru Race Course. Bridget White-Kumar helped build the Anglo-Indian card, named for the old cantonment neighbourhood.
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Railway lamb curry is mild on purpose. Tender meat, potatoes, and a tang of vinegar or tamarind keep the gravy from turning harsh on a long ride. Bridget White-Kumar, the Bengaluru cookbook author who has spent decades recording Anglo-Indian recipes, traces that plate to Spencer’s catering on trains out of Victoria Terminus. Jalebi custard pudding is the other side of the same table: syrup-soaked coils baked into custard, the kind of sweet you meet in an Anglo-Indian kitchen at home.
Both dishes now sit on a standing all-day card. Cooke Town soft-launched in early November 2026 at Renaissance Bengaluru Race Course Hotel, at No. 17 and 17/1 Madhava Nagar Extension, Race Course Lane. Executive chef Ho Chi Ming built the menu with White-Kumar. The hotel lists the room from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Country captain chicken, Anglo-Indian prawn curry, and pork vindaloo are also on the announced list.
The restaurant borrows its name from Cooke Town, a cantonment-side neighbourhood laid out in the early 1930s for G.H. Cooke, who headed the Civil and Military Station municipality from 1928 to 1934. Anglo-Indian families were among the early residents. Many emigrated in the 1950s and 1960s. The quiet lanes kept churches, schools, and a slower Bengaluru pace that people still associate with that pocket of the city. The menu is trying to live up to that address.
Where these recipes came from
Anglo-Indian cooking grew in community kitchens across railway towns, cantonments, and mining settlements: British household forms meeting Indian ingredients, vinegar, coconut, and chilli. White-Kumar grew up in Kolar Gold Fields, the colonial mining town often called Little England, then settled in Bengaluru. After retiring from Canara Bank she wrote family recipes for her daughter in England and never really stopped. She has published eight cookbooks. Anglo-Indian Cuisine: A Legacy of Flavours from the Past won India’s Gourmand culinary history prize in 2012. Nostalgic Anglo-Indian Comfort Food placed in the Gourmand digital category in 2023. Hotels now call her when they want the old dish names cooked with the stories attached.
She already tried that brief in this hotel. On June 17, 2025, she ran a one-day Anglo-Indian pop-up at the same Renaissance Race Course property: mulligatawny, Bengal Lancer’s prawns, meatball curry with devil chutney, railway vegetable cutlets, plantain fritters. Cooke Town turns that guest night into everyday service. Regional and international plates still share the all-day card, so start with the railway curry and the jalebi custard if that is why you booked.
Bengaluru has other places chasing the same flavours. 1882 Alfresco, at DoubleTree by Hilton Whitefield, takes its name from the year Whitefield was set aside for Eurasian and Anglo-Indian settlers, and serves mulligatawny, bad word curry, and railway mutton. Festival menus and supper clubs keep putting country captain and dak bungalow curry on short runs. Cooke Town is the rarer thing: breakfast through dinner, named for a neighbourhood, with White-Kumar on the development credit.
Ask for the railway lamb curry with bread or rice, the way the refreshment rooms plated it. Leave space for the jalebi custard. If the gravy is gentle, that is how the dish was meant to travel.