You could probably count the number of indifferent meals you’ve eaten in Indian restaurants on one hand; providing that hand were holding a calculator. Even when Mayfair’s swankier Indian restaurants began winning Michelin stars, it did little to lift the also-ran reputation of Indian catering. As a dining experience, Indian restaurants rank - in tandem with Chinese food - as the high-street equivalent of the airline meal-tray option; only instead of a stewardess asking you, “chicken or fish?”, it’s you asking your mates, “Indian or Chinese?”

Biryanis and bhajis remain things you eat after visiting the pub, or for a cheapish night out; never on a romantic date. Indian restaurants just don’t seem glamorous enough. Remember when Sophia Loren declared that: “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti”? Now try this: “Everything you see I owe to pilau rice and poppadums.” It just doesn’t have the same ring, does it? Well, does it?

So before earning a more respected spot on restaurant row, Indian restaurants have a few hurdles to vault. One of them is that few of us know what “authentic” Indian cuisine is. Most “Indian” restaurants are actually Bangladeshi. And because they have grown lazy on a clientele of undiscerning customers, many serve every dish in a sort of all-purpose, east-of-Clapham brown gravy, accented with varying doses of chilli heat. It’s quite possible that the chefs in these restaurants peek out from the kitchen after dispatching another tray of curried off-cuts, and take bets on whether the customers will actually put it in their mouth (“They’re eating it! I swear to you, they’re eating it!”).

And if authenticity were defined as faithfully reproducing the way most of us eat Indian food most often, then restaurants would be serving us our curries the way we traditionally scoff them on Friday nights - delivered 35 minutes after we were promised it would arrive; wrapped in silver-foil containers leaking a turmeric-stained ghee that is magnetically drawn to clothes but has been genetically modified to be resistant to all over-the-counter brands of soap powder; and with at least one of the vegetable side dishes missing from the order.

Diners lacking any alternative yardstick for measuring authenticity sometimes judge a restaurant by whether it is popular with what might be termed “natives”. You see this happening all over Soho’s Chinatown, people peering through windows, and reassuring themselves that it must be good because there are lots of Chinese eating inside. Do these people, when they’re walking through Detroit and they see a McDonald’s full of Michigan locals, reassure themselves that the burgers must be mighty fine because lots of Americans are eating in there?

In fact, the easiest way to tutor your palate is by patronising more diligent Indian kitchens, the ones where you can taste a difference between curries, and you don’t wake up the next morning feeling like your body has mysteriously absorbed six kilos of mattress stuffing by osmosis during the night. You’ll eat better food, and lazier establishments might feel goaded into sharpening their act. It’s a virtuous circle.

You could do a lot worse than start your enlightenment with a visit to Atul Kochhar’s new restaurant, Benares, in Mayfair, not far from his previous kitchen, Tamarind, where he earned a Michelin star. When I say you could do worse, you’d be pushed to do much better.

Many Indian restaurants scraped off the flock wallpaper decades ago, and switched to white walls and halogen downlighters. But Benares takes the game to a higher level. Walking into Benares, through a sleek, airy downstairs lobby, past a greeter-cum-coat-collector, up a flight of stairs, past the bar and into the main body of the restaurant, you’d wonder if you were even in an Indian restaurant.

The room’s design is the now familiar Mayfair restaurant vocabulary of dark wood, taupe upholstery and cream walls. Floors are black stone. Sliding doors reveal a private dining room that is not destined for the Saturday night rugby club knees-up. The maître d’ and waiting staff come in all colours. Beer doesn’t even feature on the drinks list alongside the wines: you’d have to ask specially. Loyd Grossman could play Through the Keyhole in this room and the panel in the studio with David Frost would struggle to guess the ethnicity of the restaurant he was standing in. It’s true there were Indian faces among the diners, and in this instance they seemed a wholly promising omen.

Even before the first napkin was unfolded on our laps Benares showed either effortless, welcoming charm or else well-drilled sang-froid by not turning queasy at the sight of our party. The party comprised two adults, a child, a reserve child, and an additional emergency back-up child - all three youngsters past the stage of needing high chairs, but still not yet old enough to, say, grasp what might make a woman like Monica Lewinsky so horribly fascinating. You can walk into smart restaurants in Paris, Rome and Madrid in this permutation of humans without the waiters’ eyes bulging to the size of satsumas. In some of London’s fancier restaurants the waiting staff might also remain silent on seeing young children on a busy Saturday night; but that never stops you hearing an imaginary noise emerging from their mouths, a sound closely resembling the noise Janet Leigh’s mouth makes in Psycho when Anthony Perkins pulls back the shower curtain.

The menu at Benares will come as a shock to those used to ordering Indian food from menus longer even than a list of Clare Short’s resignation threats: six starters, and just eight main courses. It’s spare almost to the point of sparseness. Benares is selling quality, not width.

A starter of aloo tikki might sound familiar to your ears but will be a novelty to your tongue. Instead of draughts-sized pucks of indifferently seasoned potato came a trio of potato cakes flavoured with cumin and coriander, accompanied by a ginger-spiked chutney and a warm salad of chickpeas. Ground lamb cakes were scented with mace, cardamom and rose petals. Wary of krill-like seafood in your local Indian? Then Kochhar’s salad of fat scallops, prawns, pomegranate and pumpkin seeds in a mint-and-ginger dressing will make you swoon.

A main course of crab simmered in coconut was distinctly spiced without masking the flavour of the meat or the coconut. Achari gosht - a lamb curry that most closely resembles a dish you might be offered at a more run-of-the-mill Indian restaurant - boasted such fine meat and delicate seasoning that you’ll never again be able to order lamb curry from your local with the same conviction. Chicken biryani for the juniors, made mild at the waiter’s suggestion, was nonetheless savoury, light and unanimously voted a triumph. Vegetable side dishes, such as the okra with green mango and ginger, still look green and have bite, unlike the too-common servings of ladies’ fingers which look and taste like sludge. Rices and breads: again a limited selection, but of impeccable execution.

You can ask for pistachio or mango kulfi - which were good - but why, when there are five more adventurous puddings that share no DNA with the syrupy confections you might be used to? Californian chardonnay to drink from an uncharacteristically long but ungrabbily priced wine list. Service that’s courteous and unintrusive.

Here’s the best part. Prices - starters at £4.50, mains at no more than £13.50, desserts at £3.50 - work out perhaps a third as much again as your regular, for food that is likely to be at least three times as good. Take children, so that they might grow up knowing better what to expect from Indian restaurants, and demanding it. Just don’t encourage them to compare cleavages if Sophia Loren should walk in.

Giles Coren is away

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