Spicing up the mall

It's not often that you get to go to dinner in a shopping mall. The O2 Centre might have been plonked down on the Finchley Road, but it's the sort of environment that would be perfect for bored American teenagers and heavily armed security guards.

You'll find an array of cinemas and an imposing line-up of fast-food joints, then, just when you have happily catalogued the place as a temple to Mammon and bad taste, you come upon a very large and busy book shop and a giant Sainsbury's.

The design of the O2 Centre is puzzling indeed. There's a huge amount of space - the whole place seems to be one large atrium - and there are Flintstone boulders everywhere. There are also witty fountains designed so that they turn themselves on and off.

This makes an arc of water shoot out of the rocks in a solid stream and then dive into a hole, for all the world like a giants' spitting competition. The escalators run up over a monster aquarium featuring 'tropical fish from freshwater lakes'.

Make your way up to the second level, where you'll find the modernist Indian restaurant Cumin wedged between Yo! Sushi and Ed's Easy Diner. The dining room is large and industrial, well lit with broadly spaced, heavy, wooden tables that are rather ominously bolted to the floor as if in a prison refectory.

Orders are taken by a charming Latvian waitress on a hand-held computer and the starters arrive in a matter of minutes - we are not talking painstakingly cooked-to-order here. But such is the forgiving nature of Indian food that they survive ill-treatment very well.

Murg malai tikka - chicken tikka but with a yoghurt marinade - is tender and not dried out. The hara lamb chops (more usually a main course) are solid and juicy with a pleasant spice crust. And the dum ke kebab - a rolled kebab made with lamb mince and ginger that is finished in the pan with plenty of fresh mint - is very good, with well-balanced spicing. A tandoori roti to mop up with is fresh and well made.

Main courses come plated and you get to choose between naan and rice. Given that you don't have to pay extra for these standard accompaniments, the £7.95 price tag on a pretty steady Kashmiri rogan josh isn't so bad.

A chicken jalfrezi is chilli warm rather than chilli hot and comes with a very tomatoey sweet and sharp sauce that will jar with anyone accustomed to the more widespread oniony interpretation of the dish.

There is a good range of veggie dishes although the cumin aloo - new potatoes with cumin seeds and coriander - seems light on both cumin and seasoning. Puds round up the usual suspects but the kulfis are sound, and you can have a cup of ginger and mint chai or even Ayurvedic chai.