Curry house tikkas all boxes

It started as a humble East End café attached to a sweet shop in 1974.

But three decades on, the New Tayyab in Whitechapel is being hailed as one of the best restaurants in London.

It leapfrogs celebrity favourites including The Wolseley and Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's to be named one of the top 10 eating places in the capital - in the judgment of Evening Standard Food Spy Charles Campion in his new London Restaurant Guide.

He says the New Tayyab, in Fieldgate Street, deals in 'simple and terrific' Pakistani food which is 'freshly cooked and served without pretension'.

Sizzling chicken tikka, rich kahari vegetables, sheekh kebabs, fluffy naan and nutty wholemeal roti are among his hot tips.

Campion's selection also includes French restaurants Chez Bruce by Wandsworth Common and Le Gavroche in the West End, plus Lebanese restaurant Al Waha in Westbourne Grove and the 'uncompromising' St John in Farringdon.

At the other end of the scale, however, he attacks the 'rampant commercialism' of Brick Lane.

Criticising the east London curry haven as one of the biggest culinary disappointments in the city, he says: 'From being a place where lots of restaurants served good food cheaply and cheerfully it has gone rampantly commercial.

'The restaurants are now aggressively priced, with touts trying to drag you in, and the food is not very authentic.'

Of some 50 curry houses in Brick Lane, Campion praises only one, the Bengal Village, as a 'slick new establishment serving authentic Bangladeshi cooking'.

He adds: 'There are areas in London where Indian food is marvellous - Tooting, Southall, Wembley, Ealing Road, Alperton are all thriving communities full of really good restaurants - but it saddens me that Brick Lane has become so very commercial and expensive.

'There are still some marvellous shops there, it's one of the best places to buy exotic fish in Britain, but the trouble is that the cuisine has, in the main, become cobbled together for the English.'

Campion pinpoints restaurants attached to small specialist-food stores as a rising trend in London. These include Fish-Works, which is fronted by a fishmonger's, Leadenhall Cheese - a cheese shop and eating place in Leadenhall Market, and food store/restaurants such as Villandry in Great Portland Street and Flâneur in Farringdon.