There's only one Brasserie

I was living nearby when a new establishment got under way, just opposite Gloucester Road Tube station, about 25 years ago. This venture is still very much there and going strong, having been a triumphant and deserved success from the outset.

I'm talking about what is still, in my view, London's best Indian restaurant, the Bombay Brasserie.

I first ate Indian food when I was at college in Cambridge where, for some unaccountable reason, there seemed to be more Indian restaurants per acre than anywhere else in the world, except Bombay.

But although my student friends and I went to all of them in turn, they were largely indistinguishable from each other in both decor and menu.

I continued to frequent a host of flock-wallpapered curry emporia when I started work in London; there were good ones, bad ones, and never-to-be-repeated ones.

But on the night I went to the Bombay Brasserie for the first time, it was obvious that a revolution in Indian restaurants had begun.

Everything about this huge, high-ceilinged, airy restaurant was different from the norm; tables were big, fans whirred silently overhead, exotic ferns and greenery created a sense of privacy within a room of a palatial scale. And then there was the menu.

For the first time I realised that Indian food need not be an assault course, paralysing taste buds and blow-torching several layers off the roof of the mouth.

Instead, here was a cuisine of extraordinary subtlety. Every spice and flavour could be precisely recognised, dishes had regional and seasonal significance, and there was a sheer diversity of preparations I had never imagined possible.

Starters of dum ka bater, quail cooked with yoghurt, almond and cashew purée and sev batata puri, a Bombay street snack - a biscuit-like puri topped with potato, gramflour straws, lentil, coriander, mint, tamarind and chilli chutneys - gave an idea of this detailed and subtle spicing.