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
(020-7629 8886). Lunch Monday to Friday; dinner Monday to Saturday
