Going underground to a hidden gem

Imagine the worst job in the world. Spider expert at London Zoo. GP to Amy Winehouse. Steve Coogan's publicist. Now think what the best job would be. It's harder than you might expect. Actors are insecure - too famous or not famous enough. Moguls are stressed. Hedgefunders are (unfairly) hated. And politicians, well...

Of course, you could win a fortune and become so obscenely rich that you wouldn't have to work at all, but look at the recently deceased billionairess Leona Helmsley. The self-styled Queen of Mean lived up to her name by slicing her grandchildren from her will and leaving $12 million to her mutt. Does this sound like behaviour to dispel the maxim money can't buy happiness? I don't think so.

After careful consideration, I decided a career in futurology would be ideal. Think about it. You could be terribly reassuring, promising world peace and low taxes. Yet you can never be wrong. If your predictions are long-term enough, no one is actually going to turn round and say, 'Prove it!' After all, nobody looks too closely at Nostradamus.

Futurologists have been around since the middle of the last century - engaging in long-range planning and trend watching - at first for the military and government and then for private institutions and corporations. Despite their slightly dippy, crystal-ball image, they continue to be employed by multinationals, calculating what the next big craze will be: what we'll be wearing, watching and eating.

We still seem to be eating far too much so-called fusion food, a style of cuisine imported from Australia a few years back. Pan-Asian restaurants still spring up like lotus flowers all over the capital, and as I set off for Tamarai, I felt a tad jaded.

Tamarai is on Drury Lane, sandwiched between a bookie's and a pharmacy, and you could easily miss it. Inside, it's yet another subterranean restaurant, reached by seemingly endless stairs. But once you're downstairs, the room is beautiful - black-lacquered and vast, lit by chandeliers that shine on glittery velvet cushions - a blend of Oriental and space age. The only slightly disconcerting aspect was the preponderance of TV screens on every wall, showing film of psychedelic sprouting lotus flowers. It looked a little too much like the Big Brother house.

I took a lawyer who specialises in European law and a film buff, both of whom love this kind of cooking more than I do. We had a table overlooking the VIP section (minimum spend £500), although it was empty the evening we were there. At weekends, numbers swell as the restaurant morphs into a nightclub with a DJ and video jockey (NB: lose the lotus!). The place is popular with the fashionable, and over cocktails we watched the glide of air-kissing angular women with teeny-weeny skirts and curtains of deadstraight hair.

My first surprise was the amuse-bouche: I certainly wasn't expecting a wisp of pastry topped with foie gras. A bold choice - and a perfectly executed, decadent mouthful. Even more surprising were the appetisers - the nicest thing I'd eaten in ages. We shared soft-shell crab, dim sum and pepper prawns. Mains included a baby snapper that was faultless (apart from decorative smears of what looked like Marmite on the plate), and lamb chops with masala dosa, a coconut and potato mix from southern India. Next came a tiny elderflower sorbet - again delicious.

I guess what flabbergasted me was that a place as chic and hip as this multi-functional venue should have such an excellent kitchen serving the best pan-fusion food I've had in London. Everyone should eat here at least once.

Pudding was the chef's platter of white chocolate mousse, date pancakes with vanilla ice cream and fruit skewers. If there was a complaint (and it's a small one), it was that the dark chocolate mousse tasted a little chalky. Unfortunately this reminded the film buff of the scene from Rosemary's Baby in which Mia Farrow's character eats poisoned chocolate mousse and then gets into a compromising situation with the devil. However, even given Tamarai's divine decadence, we concluded this was unlikely to happen here.