Gifted chef lifts Indian cooking

During the week this restaurant is packed with movers and shakers, all busily moving and shaking.

They come in for lunch at 11.59 am and they go out again at 12.59 pm.

Lunchtimes and even weekday evenings the pace is fast and furious, but come Saturday nights you can settle back and really enjoy Cyrus Todiwala's exceptional cooking.

The menu, which changes throughout the year, sees Parsee delicacies rubbing shoulders with dishes from Goa, North India, Hyderabad and Kashmir, all of them precisely spiced and well presented.

The tandoori specialities, in particular, are awesome, fully flavoured by cunning marinades.

Start with a voyage around the tandoor.

The murg kay tikkay tastes as every chicken tikka should, with yogurt, ginger, cumin and chillies all playing their part.

Or there's venison tikka aflatoon, which originates in Gwalior and is flavoured with star anise and cinnamon.

Also notable is the papeta nay eeda na pattice - a potato cake perked up with egg, coconut, green peas and Parsee-style hot tomato gravy.

For a main course, fish lovers should consider the patra ni machchi, pomfret stuffed with green coconut chutney.

Choose meat and you should try the dhansaak, which is a truly authentic version of the much-misrepresented Parsee speciality; it is served with a small kebab and brown-onion rice.

Breads are also excellent, and some of the accompaniments and vegetable dishes belie their lowly status at the back of the book-sized menu.

Try baingan bharta - an aubergine classic.

It's also worth checking out the weekly changing 'specials menu'.

Cafe Spice Namaste
Prescot Street, London, E1 8AZ