India, July 11 -- When I do eat Indian in London, I tend to go to the old favourites (anything set up by the Panjabi sisters, Hoppers, Quilon and Jamavar) and rarely try anything unfamiliar. In fact, there are many famous London Indian restaurants that I have never set foot in. It was time to check them out. I started with The Cinnamon Club, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. It is run by one of the UK's leading Indian chefs, Vivek Singh, who Asma Khan calls the nicest chef in the business. I was 25 years too late to review the restaurant but it exceeded my expectations on every level. It's located in an old library (there are still books on the shelves), is wonderfully atmospheric despite its size (it can seat 200 guests with ease) and Vivek turned out to be even nicer and more modest than Asma had said. The food was very good: Deer from the Balmoral estate with masala mash; Anjou pigeon, perfectly but lightly cooked in the tandoor; watermelon kanji sorbet, and best of all, a crab ghee roast made with meat from the claws of a wild Norwegian crab. I met nearly all of the chefs in the Cinnamon Club kitchen because Vivek has a thing about not claiming all the glory and letting his team get the credit. It was also 25 years ago that both Vineet Bhatia and Atul Kochhar won Michelin stars for their restaurants. Vineet has now gone global, which includes going home to the Oberois. Atul has many restaurants in the UK, but is no longer associated with Benares, the restaurant that sealed his reputation. Atul was originally a founding partner in the venture, then fell out with his other partner and exited. Benares then lost the Michelin star Atul had earned for it, and more recently there has been terrible publicity after its primary owner was convicted of trying to spike a woman's drink at a London club and sent to prison. The current chef is Sameer Taneja, who has worked or staged at some of the UK's best restaurants with such chefs as Heston Blumenthal, Pierre Koffmann and Alain Roux. But he says he learned how to cook Indian food from Atul, with whom he has worked at two restaurants. So it's only fitting that Taneja won back the Michelin star that Benares had earned when Atul was cooking. I went for lunch and could tell at once that the chef was classically trained, from the excellence of his sauces and gravies. A black-truffle shorba combined delicacy and power. Scallops Malabar (though there are actually no wild scallops in Malabar; they are a cold-water fish) worked because the gravy was so good that Taneja could have cooked kaddu in it and still made it taste delicious. Taneja is the best thing to have happened to the restaurant since Atul left. I was gobsmacked by his cooking. Asma Khan and I worked together in Kolkata in the days when she was a journalist, and I am not just thrilled by her stardom but very pleased that her reference point is a vanishing Kolkata. Asma's Kolkata is the cosmopolitan city where, at least at the level of the middle-class, neither religion nor caste mattered. She has captured the spirit of the city on TV (the Asma episode of Chef's Table has won awards), in books and most famously in her food. I went to her new restaurant in Covent Garden the day after it opened. It's still called Darjeeling Express, but the food is as good as ever. There are keema toasties along with vegetarian versions made with chilli and cheese. The Bihari fulkis are lighter than clouds. The pan-fried momos remind us that the restaurant is called Darjeeling Express. Her famous puchkas come with a slight twist in the paani. A dish of Tangra-style prawns looks simple until you bite into a prawn and the chilli and garlic flavours emerge. And finally, I went, as I nearly always do, to Jamavar. I have known the chef Surender Mohan since his days at the Leela in Mumbai and if you had told me back then that he would be the only Indian chef to run three restaurants in three countries, and get a Michelin star for each restaurant, I would have been sceptical. On the night I went, Surender's superb food went all the way from a paneer kulcha paired with Beluga caviar to home style bhindi and a terrific aloo jeera. Jamavar gets an international Mayfair crowd of high-rolling expats and visitors, along with every famous Indian cricketer and movie star who comes to London. Benares gets big-spending Brits. Asma gets the the creatives, the trendies and people attracted by her fame and activism. Vivek gets the political and media establishment. They appeal to different core markets but are united by the pride they take in being Indian and in our food heritage. There are still more places to try, including the newly opened London outpost of Tresind. Next time!...