Imli - Indian Tapas

Imli is the sister restaurant to the Michelin starred Tamarind, but it has adopted a completely different style, almost more café than restaurant as their approach is quite a simple one. It is decorated in strong colours and has fairly basic furniture; it combines all this with incredibly reasonable prices without sacrificing anything in terms of the quality of food or service.

The most striking feature of Imli though is the originality of the menu, none of your standard Indian fare there, for instance you won't find an onion bhajee or a mind blowingly hot vindaloo curry, instead they use the traditional spices in the correct way to create attractively presented dishes with an individuality of flavour that truly represents the enormously variety of food offered in the many separate regions of India.

Their unusual choices to begin the meal with even include chaat, which might be described a street fast food sold as many roadside stalls in places like Delhi, or bhel puri, a medley of puffed rice, cucumber and roasted peanuts tossed with assorted tangy chutneys. If I had the pick one that stands out it would be the spiced potato cakes, pan seared and infused with ginger, chillies and drizzled with Imli chutney; amazingly all of these three starters are only priced at £2.95.

Even their seafood platter, presented on a plate with three sections, and including peppered squid, fish cake with lime leaf and sesame garlic prawns, is a mere £5.95, what is also impressive it that they don't cut corners either, as an example the meat in their quite outstanding Goan pork curry, a mere £4.95 with rice, has been properly marinated in spices for a suitable period of time before being cooked in a spiced gravy with onions, chillies and vinegar served with paratha.

Vegetarians are most definitely not ignored, as it should be because much of Indian cuisine centres around cooking with vegetables, like their aubergine Masala, with fresh curry leaves and tomatoes served with paratha or rice, or their seasonal vegetables in a tangy cumin sauce, and masses of smaller first courses such as samosas or banana dosa, sweet banana pancakes with a savoury chutney.

For us though the highlight of our whole meal was the desserts, beautifully presented, a scoop each of fig and ginger ice cream and mango sorbet with basil, and their cardamom rice pudding with stewed prunes, all very clearly homemade as where else could you get them in London, and worth going back for alone.

However, not to be forgotten, but eschewed by us in favour of more variety, and even more amazing value, is their £7 two course with a salad lunch, where else can you find that quality of food at such low prices in Central London; it even includes choices like the aforesaid Goan pork and the pan seared potato cakes. Though you should note that they add a discretionary 12.5% service charge to all bills.

We washed all of this down with a crisp and fresh bottle of Pinot Grigio from a small, but intriguing and well chosen, list of wines. For an absolute certainty, the next time I find myself in Wardour Street; there is definitely only one destination for me to eat out at, Imli is the place now.