Hot Stuff, Vauxhall, London

Just coming in to add my voice to the chorus of appreciation for Hot Stuff! Hidden down a very unassuming street, you wouldn’t know this place was there without guidance from a local, so I was very pleased to be ushered in by my sister who lives nearby. The guys who run Hot Stuff are extremely friendly and welcoming, and made sure to make me feel appreciated as a new customer.

We had take-away and the food was top quality, tasted slightly home made and not at all like the identical flavours you get from generic curry houses all over London. Despite this, it was also super cheap. Will be back to dine in next time!

Tried this for the first time a couple of months ago and was pleasantly surprised, it is a good quality Indian and would recommend it.

Still the best Indian I’ve had in London.
They’ve recently moved the restaurant two doors down the road and the original site now houses the take-away operation, Hot Stuff On Wheels... which means when i'm too lazy to walk three blocks but still need my fix, the food comes to me!
Staff are always very friendly and chatty and the food never less than delicious – a world away from the sweet orange goo you get on Brick Lane.

I used to like Hot Stuff, but prices started to creep up, once was charged £35 for a lunchtime meal for 2 - the meal was no different to one which I paid under £20 for a year earlier. I recommend that you take a note of the prices when you order. Food Ok, but as an Indian colleague of mine said - he would never go there again.

It's hard to write this without appearing like a fawning sycophant or on the payroll. I'm neither, well not that I'm aware of.

Everything about Hot Stuff is flawless, from the initial friendly welcome, to the overall attitude of the waiters throughout, and vitally to the thumpingly massive standard of the array of dishes served. Last visit there were six of us, so we were brought a selection of starters and main dishes, along with servings of bread. Notable highlights were the bhajis that we commenced with and the fish madras, which had already caught my eye upon entering this fine establishment and clocking the chalked-up menu board, was as seamless as a rubber suit. At a push, I'd say exceptional.

We brought out own booze and after a healthy volume of culinary consumption, the menu worked out to a ridiculously reasonable £15 per person (including our tenner tip). To finish us off for the night, we were presented with Scooby Doo-themed, fruity ice pops.

Life really does not get much better than an evening spent here....

Ate here last night with a couple of friends, and we all thought it was great :)

Looking at recent reviews on this and other sites, I think expectations might be a bit hyped. No, we didn't get a smorgasbord of culinary perfection for £4.50 a head. Prices have undoubtedly crept up (and who could blame them, with the constant stream of Guardian-reading, city-type customers who wouldn't normally dream of visiting Stockwell). The decor is a bit more refined now too.

But we did get friendly service, amusing banter with the owner and, above all, excellent Indian food. We took their advice and went off-menu, receiving a selection of starters and main courses with rice and naan. Each dish tasted really good and great choice for vegetarians too. All freshly cooked, no dodgy colouring or layers of grease.

For the four of us, the bill came to £55 which isn't bad at all. We'll be going back.

We love this place. Been going there for years. Great food, well priced. Lovely staff. Book a table - it gets really busy, really quickly.

I live very close to that place and everytime, I mean every single time I walked by is completelly full!

I don't know here i UK, but in Spain if a restaurant is always full is because the food and the service is great! We also used to look at the floor - if it's dirty it's a good sygnal too, but that's another theme...

Reasonable prices, excellent and very spicy food just the great hot for spicy lovers and the option to buy your alcoholic drinks just in the shop in the corner.

I will tell anyone within earshot about this place. It's one of London's finest establishments.

Hot Stuff get the experience of Indian cuisine in London absolutely right. You know when you normally go for a curry and they bring you a weighty tome of a menu full of stuff you don't understand so you just order a chicken korma?

Well there's none of that at Hot Stuff. They just bring you everything and then charge you between £10 and £15 a head for it. And it's amazing. Just how curry should be.

Ian Wright is often there at weekends picking up his takeaway. You'll be hard pushed to find better value and better food in London.

Book ahead. They're always rammed. And rightfully so.

UNBEATABLE authentic Indian meals served by really efficient staff. All the positive comments here are TRUE. The boss is very friendly and gives a great welcome. Paranthas are even available if you ask - don't miss them.
Bring your own booze (although there's an off licence right next door).
Can't recommend highly enough - we paid £35 for four incl. soft drinks in Dec09.
There are two sittings each evening (7 and 9pm); we went at 7pm on a Weds and it was full!

My Local Indian. Fantastic!. Great atmosphere - always full. Hot Stuff has bought great food to a little known road. Full of regular customers - which is a recommendation in itself. You would do well to book in advance.
I have watched it grow and only hope that it doesn’t grow out of its small self and move!!!!!!! Of course it could take over the chippy next door. Thats my posssibility for HOT STUFF.

fantastic food, fantastic service

Some of the best Indian takeaway i have ever had. Amazing to find such a gem in stockwell! Read Rob’s review. He says it all really. Fantastic Tandoori chicken and amazing garlic naan. I have Hot Stuff’s number on speed dial as this place is a Sunday night fixture :)

There are only good things to say about Hot Stuff. The food, staff and atmosphere are all top notch. Make sure you book early as it can get busy at weekends. Once you’re in you can’t help but get caught up in the fun of it all. Brilliant.

Hot Stuff is a small anonymous restaurant, so small and anonymous in fact that, on first glance, it hardly seems fair to describe it as a ‘restaurant’. Anyone walking down Wilcox Road (itself a rather nondescript thoroughfare that connects the South Lambeth Road to the Wandsworth Road in Stockwell) would probably dismiss the place as a café, that is if they even noticed it tucked away next to the off-licence and the chip shop.

It’s undeniable that this part of south London isn’t the prettiest (when we visited there was a police sign erected nearby asking for any witnesses to an armed robbery which had occured at around 5:30 the previous Sunday evening) but Hot Stuff stands out immediately as a small oasis of good cheer with its chintzy fairylight decorations and the warm welcoming smiles of Raj and his cousin Rocky.

And that’s your first clue that Hot Stuff is going to be good: it’s a family concern run with all the passion and pride that you would expect, and that family atmosphere seems to pervade the entire establishment. Hot Stuff is never quiet, no one ever eats on their own and conversation is never ‘hushed’.

As for the food, well there’s a basic menu with all the usual favourites (bhuna, madras, khorma, tikka masala etc) but to be honest it’s not even worth glancing at that unless of course you want to admire the design principles behind a menu which is shaped like an oversized, laminated red chilli.

No, it’s much better to sit back and pick away at your poppadoms and pickles until your waiter for the evening arrives (dressed inevitably in jeans and oversized trainers), plonks himself down on the seat next to yours and enquires how you’re doing this evening. After a bit of initial chit chat you’ll get a verbal tour through the specials board and this is where the real gems of Hot Stuff are to be found.

On the evening we were there (‘we’ being just two us) one of our starters, both main courses and a vegetable side dish were ordered ‘off menu’ i.e. they didn’t appear on the large laminated chilli. Dishes like lamb meatballs, kerala chicken, and green banana and chicken curry. All of them described so lovingly and mouthwateringly by Raj that you can’t help but order a little too much.

(And if there’s a problem with Hot Stuff that is it: your ears are always bigger then your stomach. But it doesn’t matter because the prices are ludicrously reasonable and if you ask you can take your leftovers away in a foil box for lunch the next day.)

So what was the food like? Well the lamb meatballs are beautifully succulent and packed with so many subtle spices and herbs flavours that you want to spend as long as possible on each golf-ball sized treat. Even the spicy vegetable sauce that covers them is extraordinarly good, not overwhelmingly spicy and laced with vegetables cooked to the point of ‘just right’.

Another starter of mixed bhajis will be a revelation to anyone who’s used to the kind of greasy, globular mess you could bounce off someone’s head. These are fluffy, light mounds of potato, herbs and onion that break apart under your fork and come served with a dark, sticky tamarind sauce. They’re amazing.

The kerala chicken is made with coconut, curry leaves and ginger but it has none of that coconut gloopiness that screams ‘out of a tin’ and the chicken is chunky and generous. The green banana curry doesn’t really have any overpowering taste of banana either…it just tastes incredible and it has more of a kick than the kerala but that’s because we asked for it to be on the spicy side.

All of this is accompanied by some simple boiled rice and a sensational naan studded with garlic and chillies (I know it’s hard to believe that a naan can be worth a superlative like ‘sensational’ but you’ll have to take my word for it).

Hot Stuff doesn’t have an alcohol licence so you’ll have to bring you own (the off-licence I mentioned previously hasn’t missed a trick and stocks a decent selection of Indian beers) and that just helps to keep the bill down.

And talking of the bill, we paid just over £20 for our mini-feast. That’s £10 a head for some of the freshest and tastiest Indian food in London.

Thanks to its location, its size and its opening hours Hot Stuff isn’t the type of Indian that only gets packed after 11 o clock. So if you’re thinking of going on a Friday or Saturday evening you will have to book.

This is not your typical Indian! Yes you can get a take away but be prepared to be amazed. Hidden away down a quiet side street, it would be easy to miss but this place is so popular you must book before you go. The staff are just as full of character as the food is and if you return with new customers, they give you a table-sized portion of naan on the house! Well worth a try even if you're sceptical - I can't even take spicy food but this was not a problem; they cooked me a mild masala fish pronto! Very reasonably priced for what you get.