Moti Mahal

Moti Mahal, the chic Indian restaurant on Great Queen Street, is celebrating India's gastronomic roots with cooking that resurrects time-honoured dishes from rural India. The menu is a culinary narrative highlighting long-forgotten recipes from along the Grand Trunk Road, which weaves its way through many cities and villages in India. At the controls at Moti Mahal is Anirudh Arora, formerly sous chef of Benares.

The Grand Trunk Road menu features gucchi aur koftey, a diverse and richly flavoured dish from Lucknow that uses jumbo morels, simmered in saffron yoghurt sauce and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. The clamp grill or thattee, a traditional method of grilling may be an ancient technique, but here at Moti Mahal it makes a welcome appearance; expect to find delicately fragranced whole chicken seasoned with star anise and ginger, sandwiched between two clamps and then grilled.

It is not until somebody seeking out real Indian cooking has been to a restaurant like Moti Mahal, that the full range of Indian cuisine can even begin to be appreciated, with not a bottle of Kingfisher in sight, a wine list that would do credit to a French restaurant, and a choice of single malts that would impress all but the most demanding aficionado of that wonderful spirit. The décor, like everything else is glamorous to the maximum conducive with good taste.

As OK magazine reported,'Moti's got the lot'. Nobody could put it better.