Make camp at Balans

Martine McCutcheon? "Martine McCutcheon - she's always in there." "There" is Balans, Old Compton Street, W1: one of the early success stories of the never-had-it-so-gay Nineties. Seven years after opening amid the fetish boutiques and frumpish trattorias of Soho, Prady Balan's original brassy brasserie endures - a legend in its own brunchtime, as up for mid-am cappuccinos and wee-small-hours chardonnay campery as ever.

On London's flavour-of-the-month restaurant circuit, all book-me-senseless gastrodome gimmickry, the back-burner cool of Balans (say "bay-luns") is refreshing. Two parts TriBeCa diner, more parts pre-club party with a world comfort menu taking in Asia to Italy, it's also a puzzler in the capital's themed uniformity: a full-frontal gay favourite that pulls Sunday Fulham mums and Beauchamp Place dowagers; a mass-market formula that's nicely neighbourhood. In essence, we're talking the missing link between Conran and Cafe Rouge.

Prady Balan is not in the business of mainstream enterprises such as Dome, which have moved into the "gay village", declaring themselves "gay-friendly". Having made his name in Old Compton Street, he has expanded outwards, defying the diktat that two-fifths of new restaurant ventures don't survive: there are branches in Soho, Earl's Court, Knightsbridge and Miami. This December, a fifth outpost will open on Kensington High Street while Balan toys with the idea of conquering Islington, Brighton and Manchester.

So Mr B, out with it - are you, or are you not, a closet chain? "I'll come completely out in the open - I'm not a closet chain. I'm not really going into any new territory. I'm getting all the gays out the closet in different areas," he says, tongue safely in cheek. "Well, you know there's a lot of them out there." Then, more seriously: "I'm bringing what we have to a larger audience. If I can do well with the gay community, which is far more finicky - they know exactly what they want in terms of presentation, food, quality, service, layout, decor - I can keep everybody happy."

Successfully tapping the pink pound is in any entrepreneur's interests: recent research has placed 77 per cent of Britain's six million gays and lesbians in the wooable ABC1 economic groups. Balan, 56, who was born in Calicut, southern India, came to London for schooling, winding up at McDonald's for a decade from 1975. ("I've been to Hamburg University, got a degree in hamburgerology.") A year in Saudi - "this Arab made me an offer to join him and open up some restaurants" - and he returned to England in 1987 with £20,000. With a £100,000 loan he launched the landmark Old Compton Cafe - "bloody hard work, day, night, four years, no holidays, paying Paul Raymond a huge rent".

All the same, it was a lifeline for a gay scene faced with the Hobson's choice of often Jurassic-homophobic pubs and blacked-out pick-up joints: "Whereas other businesses were saying, 'Hang on, we don't want to get involved in this', I kind of went the other way and started providing gay newspapers and everything else and capitalised on them rather than discriminating. I wanted to bring it out more into the open and say, 'Here we go, we have a place, it's nice, it's trendy, it's modern - and gay.'"

Four years later Balans unveiled its upbeat banquettes-and-bruschettas formula, elevating gay life further to glass-fronted street level. "Gay people associate me with having gay restaurants and they feel very much part of it," says Balan. "I've found a niche ... a place gay people find very comfortable." Why the empathy?

"I find it much easier, to be absolutely honest with you. The last thing I need is lager louts last thing at night. I mean, if I get a problem it's usually from straight men who are drunk and behaving very badly, whereas the queens get a little bit tipsy and it's all giggles and everything. I have a huge following of women who find it safe to be in here because they don't get pestered. And today I have a huge straight following, too."

So is he? Or isn't he? You feel you shouldn't need to ask, but do: "I can't answer that," replies Balan, "You can print that, but you can leave it open."

Balans
Old Compton Street, London, W1D 4UG