NOW OPEN: Isso Prawn Crazy Brings Its Build-Your-Own Prawns to Canary Wharf.…
Isso Prawn Crazy, the cult Sri Lankan seafood brand, has landed in Canary Wharf: its first restaurant outside Sri Lanka, and the politest possible way to describe what is essentially a build-your-own-prawn production line with genuinely serious sourcing behind it.
The brand started in Colombo in 2016 as a 16-seat restaurant from founder Apinash Sivagumaaran, built on the idea that Sri Lanka's prawns deserved better than being an afterthought on someone else's menu. Nine years and several Sri Lankan branches later, the 90-seat Canary Wharf site is the first stop outside home turf, which is a long way to send a prawn, but here we are.
The format asks three genuinely important questions. First, your prawn: Black Tiger, Flower, Giant Freshwater, or the ominously named Colossal Fresh Water, which sounds like it should come with a waiver. Then your sauce: Hot Butter, Jaffna Curry, Negombo Curry, Turmeric Coconut Curry, or a Kithul syrup number laced with garlic and chilli. Finally, your carrier: ghee rice, curry leaf and garlic rice, or parotta to mop up whatever's left on the plate. Extras run to Isso wade, coconut-crumbed prawns, cuttlefish fritto, and veg pakora, for anyone who's brought someone who doesn't do seafood and needs placating.
The prawns themselves are sourced directly from fishing communities in northern Sri Lanka, which the brand is very happy to tell you about, and which, for once, might actually be the point rather than the marketing.
Drinks run the full range: cocktails, wine, beer, spirits, plus lemonades, iced tea, and a line of heritage Colombo pours, for anyone who'd like to drink as though they're already on the holiday this restaurant is quietly trying to sell them.
We haven't been yet; when we have, you'll get the real verdict, not this one. For now: it's open now in Canary Wharf, ninety seats, and apparently the only place in London doing prawns quite like this.
Booking: prawncrazy.co.uk