More posh spice

In The Good Curry Guide's annual Indian restaurant awards announced this week, Best Chef went to Yogesh Datta who runs The Painted Heron in Chelsea, also voted Best Indian in this year's Tio Pepe ITV London Restaurant Awards. A second Painted Heron has just opened south of the river. There seemed to be every good reason to hurry along.

As at the Cheyne Walk original, there is little in the name or decor to signal the nationality of the cooking. In fact the large, light-filled premises of the new Painted Heron look much the same as they did when the place was called Kennington Lane Restaurant and Bar.

The interior is pleasingly plain with tables and comfortable black-leather-upholstered chairs well-spaced on the bare wooden floors. One new addition (I think) is a pretty terrace at the back where last week chairs were stacked ready for the warmer weather which, happily, has arrived.

What has always impressed me about Yogesh Datta's cooking, since I first encountered it at Tabla in Docklands, is the daily changing list of dishes - which other Indian restaurant has a dated menu? - responsive to market and inspiration, and his ability to move the cooking forward without losing sight of its essential Indianess.

Two good cases in point among the first courses of Tuesday 11 May were baby squid and octopus in tomatoand-lentil chilli broth, which was like rasam projected from a drink to a dish, and lamb's heart and liver stir-fried with Lahori spices, which has a sophisticated tenderness in the meat, contrasting with quite brash spicing. And a wonderful gravy results, crying out to be soaked up by the irresistible "sweet and nutty" naan.

In the main course, seafood kedgeree with hot-and-sour Goan curry, which seems to be something of a signature dish, is definitely not to be missed if it is on offer. Again, it introduces sensation to soothing.

Long-braised lamb shank with Kashmiri spices and fenugreek was also excellent, and if you can judge a kitchen on its chicken tikka masala, then chicken tikka with almonds in tomato-and-cream curry performed very well.

From the vegetable section we tried the eminently seasonal asparagus and peas in fenugreek curry which was almost too crisp in texture. Yellow lentils with cumin and garlic were really nice forked up with some pilau rice.

Desserts, sensibly, don't cleave too closely to the subcontinent, although a gesture is made in the ice-cream flavours: coconut, ginger, rum and raisin, walnut and rhubarb. Mango is used to flavour the lassi that is poured over fried (in pastry) vanilla ice-cream.

Even the wine list is seasonal. The spring selection starts at £13 for the Orb Rouge 2003 from south-west France. Pushing the boat out as far as it will go is a Gevrey-Chambertin Rossignol-Trapet 1999 at £47.