Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

Bouncers tick your name off before letting you in. Is this a nightclub? A restaurant? A bar? All, and none. This vast former club has been kitted out in black, with pulsing coloured lights to distract you from the claustrophobically low ceiling and cost-conscious finish. Yet there's no dance music and no dancefloor; you don't need to book for the bar, but you must book to eat.

The drinks list is impressive - easily the best new cocktail and wine list we've seen for ages - but as a restaurant Tamarai is a sham: it's a list of expensive bar snacks posing as a restaurant menu. Even our waitress kept stressing how small the dishes were. Presentation is elaborate. Caramel prawns with browned garlic (three for £8.50) was the pick of three 'small plates'. Less successful was green salad leaves with a stingy topping of crab and pomelo costing £10.50; the bitter rocket leaves clashed with the delicate crab and citrus.

Traditional recipes are liberally adapted. The homely Burmese dish kaukswe was a beef version and very mild; the right spicing was there, just not enough of it. The dish described as 'uppama' (£16.50) substituted North American wild rice for the semolina grains of this south Indian dish, and has been paired with prawns dabbed with a novel curry leaf and coconut chutney; creative, without going too far.

We'd eaten three courses each, but were still hungry. One more, a pudding of roast baby pineapple (£7.50), was the size of a large tomato, served with an exquisite pal payasam (south Indian vermicelli and milk pudding) ingeniously flavoured with vanilla. But even with a food bill of £45 per head, we left peckish. Pop in for a drink instead, if you can get past the bouncers.

Time Out London Issue 1892: November 22-29 2006