Chutney Mary

Chutney Mary started out life in 1990 and without a shadow of doubt never looked back. Perhaps this is a comment on the British attitudes to Indian cuisine, and curry in particular, for when the late Robin Cook made his 'chicken tikka masala' observation he was not far wrong, and in an age when multi culturism is fashionable we could do a lot worse than concentrate on exchanges of culinary traditions. Their colourful Website is a mine of information and well worth a regular browse.

From the outset Chutney Mary has been picking up the gongs, and deservedly so. In 2002 a major transformation took place, bringing the restaurant even more into the London mainstream, and the awards continued to flow, including Best Modern Indian Restaurant in London for 2003 and 2004.

Fay Maschler, writing in the Evening Standard remarked "Not so much Bollywood as jolly, jolly good", and if, as one suspects, she was referring to the décor she could hardly be more right.

The approach to food here is to combine traditional Indian recipes with the contemporary ways that food is going in India, presenting refined Indian cooking at its very best. The emphasis on seafood will be welcome to many who wonder why more conventional Indian restaurants have so little on the menu, particularly with a coastline that extends so far. Tapas have their Indian counterpart in kebabs, and breads, always a hot number if you'll pardon the pun, have the attention of those who would extend their range.

Starters at Chutney Mary could include a real artisan soup, spiced seafood of great delicacy, a well presented chaat and flavoursome kebabs. There is no hesitation here in using the ingredients and produce of the country such as game, and applying Indian cooking techniques and adapted recipes.

If there is one country in which vegetarians get a really square deal it must surely be India, and at Chutney Mary there is a choice of two platters, one of which is a traditional North Indian composition of vegetables and daal. A more modern approach comes in the form of seven mini-dishes such as stir-fried banana flower with coconut, baby courgette masala, okra and water chestnut combined into one platter.

Indian food is by nature colourful, though to look at some of the dishes served elsewhere the colour element has been lost to a universal Windsor brown occasionally alleviated by a touch of turmeric or the flash of a chilli defying the colour ban.

Chutney Mary are to be lauded for helping to put to flight the universal assumption that Indian food is worthy only of pints of indigestible lager, or CAMRA approved ales whose own flavours are submerged in a flood of curry. Wine is taken seriously, aided by an input from Matthew Jukes, the writer on wine, to whom the buying of wine is no great hardship. The fruits of his labours are to be found in a wine list that has attracted warm support, particularly the helpful annotations.