Midway through lunch at Salaam Namaste, I asked the friend who'd recommended it if he knew what this newcomer to the heart of London's engagingly shabby Bloomsbury was doing by way of self-advertisement. This isn't usually an area of fascination, but the emptiness of the room was so at odds with the quality and cheapness of the food that I was eager to know what was happening on the PR front. "Well," he said, "they've hired a guy to walk up and down Great Ormond Street with a sandwich board."

And that was that. When new restaurants routinely pay PR agencies fortunes to pepper us with enough clumsily written press releases to slash this log-fire-loving reviewer's annual kindling bill by 92.7%, this manifestation of the Corinthian spirit had a dramatic effect on the emotions. How could you not fall in love with a place with so much to shout about and so little voice with which to do the shouting?

This lack of self-regard is evident as soon as you enter a small, square room done out in a cut-price utilitarian style (lurid red-and-white colour scheme, barely adorned walls, basic furniture and tableware) redolent of one of those Chinatown cheapos in which the waiters begin the attritional campaign to hurry you out the moment you take a bite of your first prawn cracker. In fact, the previous restaurant on this graveyard site was Chinese, and it's a depressing pointer to the lack of respect in which our leaders are held in this age of cynics and sneerers that it failed despite having hosted a 50th-birthday dinner for Tony Blair, it being a favourite of that excellent judge, Cherie, whose chambers are nearby. The lease was taken up, so the exceedingly chatty manager told us, by new ownership that includes the chef, who previously worked in a swanky Delhi hotel before ploughing his life savings into this project.

He is clearly quite a talent. At the beginning of the menu, in the one brief foray into narcissism, a line insists that this is "a new sensation in Indian dining", and my only quibble here is with "Indian", the cuisine technically being pan-subcontinental, including as it does recipes from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Sensational, however, as well as novel and intriguing, is what several dishes were. Of the starters, the pick was kathi kabab, a piece of chapatti filled, shawarma- or burrito-style, with spiced lamb, chilli and cucumber and garnished with a homemade chutney sharp enough to enliven this delectable ensemble without compromising the delicacy. To find such a superb and filling dish in central London for £3.95 made me nervous about the grasp of profit margins, as did the £4.50 charged for a large serving of excellent tiger prawns in a gratifyingly potent Goan peri-peri sauce. Aloo chat was also outstanding, the potatoes adorned with loads of cumin and a sweet/sour medley of other spices.

For those who prefer more familiar high-street tandoori stuff, the usual suspects have all been rounded up, too. But we stuck with the more unusual dishes, and were richly rewarded - with one exception: a horribly if indistinctly overspiced crab vindaloo with the texture of purée. Everything else, however, was great. Goan green chicken curry zinged with chilli, mint and coriander, and carried off the clever trick of retaining its ability to numb the tip of the tongue without losing clarity of flavour. Better still was a magnificently juicy tandoori-baked pomfret, marinated in a medley of fresh herbs and spices, and served on the bone. Side dishes of baby aubergine with fried onion and tamarind and ladies' fingers stir-fried with garlic and mustard were wonderful, too. Breads and rice were faultless.

This is vibrant, inventive, imaginative food, cooked with real flair and precision, served with warmth and charm, and palpably underpriced. If there's an ounce of justice in this vicious world, an alliance between word of mouth and the odd rave review will soon drive that sandwich board into the more familiar hands of a golf-equipment wholesaler, a sworn enemy of protein, or a Book of Revelations-fixated soothsayer with an inside steer on the precise date of the apocalypse.

Rating: 9/10

Telephone 020-7405 3697
Address 68 Millman Street, London WC1
Open All week, lunch 11.45am-2.30pm, dinner 5.30-11pm (11.30pm Sat)
Price £20-25 a head for copious meal with wine or beer