Our new restaurant critic calls in on Indian Accent, a stylish newcomer to Mayfair
• Indian Accent 16 Albemarle Street, London W1, 207-629-9802. Open Mon-Sat, noon-2pm, 5.30-10pm. Lunch £25/£30 for two/three courses, dinner £55/£65 for three/four courses, all plus drinks and service.
Over the past 500 or so restaurants I’ve been to, I’ve developed a shorthand for places like Indian Accent: the scribble “OPM”, or Other People’s Money. As in, if you find yourself in Mayfair drubbing through someone else’s expense account, well, I cannot recommend Manish Mehrotra’s teensy-weensy blue cheese naan enough. His style of naan, smaller than a Farley’s rusk and thinner than a slice of Mother’s Pride, appears as an amuse-bouche with a Lilliputian pewter jug of curried coconut sipping sauce. Pinky in the air. Glug, glug. It is a cutting stereotype that all northern women love gravy, but at this, Mehrotra’s third opening (after New Delhi and New York), I drank curry sauce elegantly, as an aperitif, and I bloody loved it.