GOURMET LONDON -- PART 4

GORDON RAMSEY TO ALAIN DUCASSE OK, so we’d had a good meal. Actually, a fantastic meal. But wasn’t London still predominated by stale-smelling, darkened curry joints with carpeting that had been installed when the Taj Mahal was in pre-construction? We figured finding innovative Indian food would be as challenging as finding a Cuban coffee window in this city. Once again, we found ourselves growing enlightened. The next day we disembarked from a big, red double-decker at Piccadilly, and just off the English equivalent of Times Square we entered an unremarkable office building clad with scaffolding. On the mezzanine level, the elevator door opened and we stepped into a cheerily lighted restaurant called Veeraswamy. No stale carpet smell here: just lacquered walls of purple, green, yellow and other vibrant sari colors. The light from sleek, modern lighting fixtures played delightfully on chrome and gold leaf accents. Not what we expected from the oldest surviving Indian restaurant in the United Kingdom, whose storied history includes visits from Edward, Prince of Wales, Indira Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin and Marlon Brando. Our host, General Manager Vilas Palnitkar, directed us to a pleasant table near a window, from which we could see office workers running errands on lunch hour and men working construction on the building.