3 course fixed price menu, including a half bottle of wine for £30

This offer is available from Thu Feb 7, subject to availability as displayed in the booking interface. Offer includes taxes and excludes service charge.
Offer valid until May 31

Aristotle supposedly said that 'Beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction'. More than two millennia later, but in a similar vein, researchers found that near-identical dishes from the same kitchen, served in three very different settings - a very smart restaurant, neighbourhood bistro and army canteen - will consistently get higher meal ratings in the smarter settings. This is why restaurants spend fortunes, small and large, making themselves look good, to enhance the enjoyment of a meal - mediocre or otherwise.

Benja is a little beauty of aThai restaurant, stunningly decorated by designer Ou Baholyodhin. Dark grey slate walls are adorned with colourful carved lacquer carp and the upholstery is sumptuous. Thai staff do their best to put customers at ease, offering free appetisers of betel-leaf wrapped nibbles.

Tom klong (tom meaning soup, klong meaning canal) is a variation on tom yum soup, but had a one-note citrus flavour and little spice complexity; some fish, a couple of prawns and one mussel didn't justify the £6.95 price tag, either. To charge £6.95 for a bowl of diced fruit salad doused with chilli and lime flavours was even cheekier, especially when the dish had none of the green papaya that the name 'som tam' suggests. Yellow lamb curry (£13.95) had a taste no more sophisticated than Vesta curry sauce, and a 'four vegetable' dish - at £7.50 - resembled a supermarket bag of baby vegetables coated with an insipid sauce. We decided to go elsewhere for desserts.

With so many neighbourhood Thai restaurants sharing a me-too look, it's refreshing to see one that's made such a big effort with the interior. However, Benja's dishes are expensive, and the four dishes we tried all fell well short of expectations. Real beauty, as we all know, has to come from within.

Time Out London Issue 1905: February 21-27 2007

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