Rasoi Vineet Bhatia, 10 Lincoln Street, London SW3 (020 7225 1881). Meal for two, including wine and service, £140
If ever you should find yourself craving authenticity, go to the nearest good Cantonese restaurant and order some chicken's feet. You won't find anything more authentic than that. To my mind you also won't find anything much more disgusting: nasty, chewy bits of flavourless cartilage that ricochet off the teeth. You might also like to try the great Ukrainian dish of salted pork fat coated in chocolate, or the jellied gefilte fish of my Jewish brethren. Both authentic. Both horrible.
The lesson we can take from this is that authentic is not the same thing as nice. The cult of authenticity is one of the greatest culinary red herrings there is, never more so than when I hear critics attacking the food of acclaimed Indian chef Vineet Bhatia (pictured, right), who scored one of the first Michelin stars for an Indian restaurant at London's Zaika. Because he has adopted some of the conventions of classier French restaurants - the amuse-bouche and pre-dessert - and will allow Western ingredients on to his plates - truffle oil, or dill - he is not worthy of serious discussion. He is inauthentic.
This is tosh of the first water, not just because authenticity tells us nothing, but because at the heart of his food is pure Indian technique. Spices are roasted and ground down; sauces are built up (as against reduced down, in the French classical tradition); the tandoor rules supreme. But the main reason it is complete tosh is this: his food is delicious. At Zaika he proved himself to be a chef of startling wit and originality. At his new solo venture Rasoi Vineet Bhatia (which translates as Vineet Bhatia's kitchen), he restakes his claim to the title of best Indian chef in Britain.
The setting for this new venture, for which he has remortgaged himself, is a Chelsea town house of elegant intimate rooms, stripped down to bare dark floorboards and leather banquettes, with the occasional flash of vivid textile. It concentrates attention where it should: on the food. Starters come as multi-part platters. A seafood assembly brought a crab cake, rich with the sweetness of the beast cut through by subtle spicing. There was a hunk of buttery tandoori salmon crusted with dill and a huge crispy-battered prawn. The duck version gave us a duck samosa of delicious crunch and, well, duckiness plus a fabulously intense, spiky duck soup that delivered layers of flavour.
The key to Bhatia's cooking lies in his control of the aromatic, those flavours that register at the back of the throat rather than on the tongue, as a clear suggestion rather than as a smack. It was there in a dish of large king prawns in a chilli masala which filled the mouth with the essence of coconut, and again in a tartlet of shrikand (a sweetened yogurt) infused with saffron served as a pre-dessert, and once more in an Indian-tea ice cream that accompanied my more-ish crispy chocolate and almond samosa.
Were there things that didn't quite register? Yes. My smoked tandoori lamb with masala mash potatoes, which lacked clarity. Service is a little stiff, and I do wish they could find a few more bargains for the wine list. But these are details. My meal was one of the most thrilling I have eaten this year. Was it cheap? God no, but the idea that Indian food always must be by dint of provenance is as bogus as that bankrupt notion of authenticity. Good food costs, and the cooking at Rasoi Vineet Bhatia is very good indeed.
