Telephone: 020 7351 7823
Address: 257-259 Fulham Road, London SW3
Dinner for two, with wine and including service, £110.
On Friday nights, I quite often seek post-deadline sustenance in an Indian meal delivered to my door (thanks to Classic Tandoori, London NW6, free delivery within a five-mile radius, praised by Fay Maschler, lovely peshwari nan). Sometimes, however, I might even make it out of the house and on to Westbourne Grove, where west London's lovers of no-nonsense Indian food divide into two camps: Khan's devotees or habitués of the Standard. Not quite born but certainly raised there, I'm a Standard girl myself. Such is my fierce devotion, indeed, that I've never quite managed to set foot in (the much prettier) Khan's a few doors down.
But the point I labour to make is that with certain cuisines, variety is not always the spice of life - indeed, surely for most punters the unctuous predictability of an Indian meal is an important part of its appeal. You can move from high street to high street around the country and it will be a bit like playing the Generation Game 's conveyor belt: 'Ah, chicken tikka masala, vindaloo, cuddly toy, sag aloo...' You don't really want surprises in an Indian restaurant, you want fuel and beer. However, I have just experienced a new benchmark in culinary decadence - not just the eating of a non-takeaway Indian on a Monday night, but a slice of truly Ghetto-Fabulous (Chelsea division) decadence: eating an Indian meal on a Monday night at the freshly Michelin-starred Zaika, wherein chef Vineet Bhatia creates miracles.
Zaika is a sitar symphony of beiges and browns, creams and biscuits, with leathery banquettes and tasselly cushions, a blast of a purple wall and waiters in chocolate-coloured Nehru jackets. There are two big rooms in which the tables are spaced at respectful distances. It's a warm, stylish space and, on this January Monday, heaving with the Chelsea Settlers - a stylish though not very warm collection of soignée blondes in their early thirties boasting a variety of Euro-accents, a wardrobe of milky cashmeres and Labrador-coloured suedes accessorised by vast, blindingly Klieg-like rings worn on French-manicured hands that don't do dishes. Plus, of course, their wives. It's not just another country down here in SW3, it's several other countries. Interestingly, the clientele includes the highest proportion of smokers I've seen in any restaurant for yonks.
Crunching on mini-poppadums, the partner and I pore over the menu for a very long time: descriptions are intriguing and choices hard. Eventually I settle on the jhinga khichdi - an Indian risotto with red onion and coriander topped with crispy prawn - and the titar mussalam - pheasant with black lentils, punjabi spices and new potatoes in a black-lentil sauce with morels.
After discovering that the scallops are off this evening (quite right, too, on a Monday), the partner opts for the dhunga machli tikka - tandoori-smoked salmon with spices, mustard and dill - and veinchinna mamsun - a spicy lamb masala, dry-cooked with powdered bay leaf, peppercorn, cinnamon and tamarind rice. On the side, we overindulge in a selection of rice, raita, cauliflower florets and paratha. Somehow, beer doesn't hit the right note, so we select a white wine that promises not to fight the impending flavour-fest.
And now to the boring bit: the superlatives. Of course, one expects a Michelin-starred kitchen to avoid cliché - but to do so with a cuisine that has, on these shores at least, become its own cliché is even more of a feat. Everything we ate managed to exorcise the ghosts of a thousand Indian meals past and reveal them to be, if they were lucky, merely tragically bludgeoned and abased versions of this meal. In the words of the partner, who was not only slightly stressed on arrival, but is also, professionally, a visual person: 'The taste of everything you eat always comes through the spices.' I couldn't have put it better myself.
Most of us like to think we know the meaning of words like tikka and biryani, but if they're being bandied about by Vineet Bhatia, it is probably best to unlearn everything. For instance, such was the intense subtlety - not, I think, a contradiction in terms - of the tandoori-smoked salmon that, in my book at least, 'tandoori' need no longer describe something made stringy and florid in an industrial-strength oven - even though I'm usually quite happy with stringy and florid.
But despite having done so at length, it is almost pointless (if not insulting) to compare Zaika with your local Indian - at this level one should really only compare like with like. Except that in this case there is no 'like' because I haven't been to Tamarind, the only other London 'Indian' with a Michelin star, thus Zaika must go it alone, boldly, as a first-class restaurant by anybody's standard (let alone the Standard's standard). If the kitchen can sustain this level of cooking, it will be worthy of another star next year.
In short, this turned out to be one of the very best meals I have ever eaten in London. And if further proof were needed, how often have you been seriously tempted by an Indian dessert menu? Take it from me, Zaika's aaam ki kheer - a deliriously scented confection of mango and coconut rice - is an all-singing, all-dancing Bollywood blockbuster of a pud, and all done in the best possible taste.
· Jay Rayner returns next week.
