Pizza Express tycoon's taste for curry

The man who made his millions from Pizza Express today launched plans for a major chain of Indian restaurants.

David Page paid £2.4 million for the Bombay Bicycle Club restaurant in Clapham, with a view to opening 40 more in London in the next two years and selling a linked line of ready meals in supermarkets.

Mr Page, who floated the pizza chain in the Eighties, later left the firm and launched the Clapham House company in December, in order to set up new chains almost from scratch.

He plans eight Bombay Bicycle Club restaurants and 32 takeaways across the capital before rolling them out nationwide.

The restaurant was started in the early Nineties by chef Parm Sawuck and businessmen Julien Cahn and Manjit Shihn who wanted to sell what, at the time, was a new concept - fusion food.

Mixing Asian and European cuisine, they insisted on only fresh ingredients and dishes cooked to order, rather than the pot-boiled curries that had been the tradition in much of Indian cookery.

The restaurant has grown to be one of the area's favourites and has developed five nearby takeaways. Now, as well as boasting a full house most evenings, the Bombay Bicycle Club sells 1,500 takeaways every weekend. It had sales of £2.6 million last year.