A culinary adventure

In Paris the smart chefs do it all the time. Once their Michelin-starred, finedining establishment is a success, they open a bistro en face just across the street, or in some cases in the property that backs on to the original restaurant. This second-string eatery benefits from proximity to the main kitchen, and usually offers a slightly different menu or price range.

Sarkhel's is one of the best Indian restaurants south of the Thames. Over the years it has expanded along Replingham Road and it now sprawls through several adjoining shop fronts. The end one of these is given over to what serves as Udit and Veronica Sarkhel's bistro en face. Calcutta Notebook is a small, friendly restaurant where all the food comes through a hole in the wall from Sarkhel's next door. The eponymous Calcutta Notebook is the volume in which Udit Sarkhel jotted down the favourite recipes of his mother and grandmother, and the dishes served here are a nostalgic take on Bengali home cooking. Do not be put off by unfamiliar dishes --remember that Bengalis are very keen on fish and rich flavours.

From the starters, a dish called ghungi is a splendid combination of tastes and textures - curried chick peas come with a sharp date chutney for balance and a finishing touch of roasted cumin. Or there's the mochar chop, a potato croquette, fried crisp and dry outside with chopped banana flowers flavouring the centre. The alloo kheema chop is a potato rissole with a heart of minced meat. Chicken kobiraji is a grown-up take on chicken nuggets - flatter, tastier and with a light, frilly batter. The nizami bihari kebabs are also good - lean lamb, cut thin and grilled. Best to order some bread with the starters - the luchi are puffed-up, hot, fried breads, or there's the flaky dakhai porotha.

Bengalis love fish, but they have a much more tolerant approach to bones than Brits, hence the option of having the maacher jhol made with halibut as well as the more trad rui (also called bony carp).

The 'must-have' Bengali fish dish is shorshe bata maach, which is small fillets of a bony freshwater fish called pabda in an interesting, green, creamy sauce made with fresh mustard. Anyone who likes hands-on involvement with their dinner should go for the kakrar jhal - a bowl of green onion stew with huge chunks of blue swimmer crab. It is flagged as chilli hot on the menu but comes across as quite gentle. Very good eating. From the meat list there is a super star dish - gol-barir kosha mangsho - casseroled lamb with very rich gravy. The panthar jhol is a velvety goat curry served on the bone.

Do not miss out on the veggie dishes. Young, slim aubergines come in a sauce made from yoghurt and mustard (begun shorshe), and there is shuktoni (a mixed vegetable dish with plenty of karela in it), the gourd giving the dish a bitter tang that is supposed to stimulate the appetite and which seems to work.

Service at Calcutta Notebook is just as slick and friendly as you would expect from Sarkhel's, and the atmosphere benefits from being a little cosier. This is a place to go for an adventure: you'll get to try some Bengali dishes that you have never tried before without breaking the bank.

Calcutta Notebook
201 Replingham Road, Southfields, London, SW18 5LY