Rasoi curries favour with Conran

Our second visit was for dinner at Rasoi, a small Indian restaurant in a terrace house just off the Sloane Square end of the King's Road. This time I went with my wife, who also knows a thing or two about food and restaurants.

There was a strange end-of-the-world feeling about London that night and Rasoi - along with just about every other restaurant in the UK - was empty. It was football night, though I expect England's loss has been greeted with mixed feelings by the restaurant community.

I love Indian food and have spent a lot of time all over India, eating the very different cuisines of the many different areas, and it is nearly always delicious, generous, full of flavour and cheap. Rasoi is certainly not cheap - first courses are between £9 and £16, main courses about £20 and puds £8. However, it is generous and full of flavour - a bit too much at times.

Vineet Bhatia is the well seasoned chef who has cooked in several of London's most notable Indian restaurants. This is his own venture and it has only been open a couple of weeks. He has a charming and keen staff, almost overly keen at times, but that is often the case in new restaurants that haven't quite settled down.

The choreography is still a bit awkward and hesitant. It is also interesting that restaurants seem to work best when they are full and buzzing. When they are empty, everything seems to go wrong.

Vineet is trying to escalate Indian food into a category which might be loosely called "international haute cuisine". Chefs around the world are trying to do this by taking a national cuisine and adding influences from other countries, a form of fusion food.

Sometimes it works but very often it doesn't and you feel that the chef, and they are always chefs (or technicians as I believe they now like to be called, rather than cooks), are really trying hard to make their mark. "Vive la différence" might be their clarion call.

I often cry out (quietly) in frustrated desperation: "For goodness sake leave well alone." Don't disguise the flavour of a delicious scallop (in Rasoi's case) with all sorts of other flavours; instead, spend the money on the very best ingredients and save money on chefs primping and ditzing the food and presenting it like a BritArt work rather than a plate of food that makes you hungry to look at it.

Anyway, back to Rasoi, where we had a glass of champagne on the house, flavoured with rose-water, which might have surprised the burghers of Epernay, and some delicious mini-poppadums and chutneys.

Our first courses were the scallops referred to above, expensive at £16, and a dish of mixed samosas at £9, which were good. The main courses were more classic, good and generous. Lamb Rogangosh at £20 and chicken biryani at £18. Rather to our surprise, we were also supplied with a vegetable stir-fry at £6 and a trio of delicious breads at £4. We had not ordered them but they were on the bill. A mango rice kuhr was £8, a dull but decent pud.