Maida
148-150 Bethnal Green Road, London E2
Tel: (020 7739 2645)
Meal for two, including drinks, £45
I am sitting in a Muslim Pakistani restaurant just off London's Brick Lane, ordering tandoori lamb chops, and I feel like I am committing adultery. Close by is Tayyab's, the leading Pakistani grill house, famed for the pungency of its marinades and the size of its chops. I had eaten there only a few days before, at a dinner to mark the passing of one of its most treasured customers. Nearly 150 people had turned out to honour an East End Jew with a raucous laugh called Tony Finch, a gifted educationalist who worked with special-needs children by day, and ate his way around the world's restaurants in his spare time. He used his acute and unsentimental good taste to separate the genuine article from the confidence trick and introduced huge numbers of people to Tayyab's, including me. Certainly I wouldn't have reviewed it in such glowing terms a year or two back had it not been for him. Then Tony had the bad grace to die on us all far too young. The only compensation: he gave us an excuse to eat a lot more of Tayyab's chops.
And yet here I am, just a few days later, at a newish place called Maida, preparing to taste someone else's chops, to chew someone else's bones, because a friend has told me he prefers it to Tayyab's. The man responsible for this heresy is the comedy writer Charlie Skelton, who some of you may recall from Space Cadets, the Channel 4 show in which a bunch of touchingly trusting souls were told they were going into space when in fact they were going to Ipswich. Charlie was the plant, the agent provocateur, put there by the producers to stir things up a bit, which he did with great aplomb, mostly because he has such a cheery, open, plausible manner. It occurs to me that I might be the victim of another of his scams, but I dismiss the idea. Compared with space travel, a good tandoori chop is a very serious business. He would never joke about something like that.
Here, then, is the verdict. The chops at Maida are not better than those at Tayyab's, which are more forthright with the spicing and more generous with the all-important fat. When it comes to grilled and roasted meats, fat cannot be optional. But that is not to dismiss what Maida is doing. It is still a restaurant worth knowing about. Four of us gave the menu a shakedown, and everything we tried was well above average. Those chops, for example, might not be premier division but they still had a full meaty kick. We tried some perky tandoori prawns, with a serious bit of spice rub which managed not to overwhelm the flesh, and curls of lamb, wrapped around a mince of itself, again cooked off in the tandoor, a satisfying mix of textures.
We also liked the stews: the dark and intense lamb curry, khade masala ka gosht, made with crushed spices and dominated by roast cumin; a creamier lamb dish bursting with cardamom; a fine multilayered dhal, and a chicken korma flavoured with lemon and coriander for the spice-phobic among us. (It was Victoria Coren, as you ask; take a look at her picture byline in the main paper. You can just tell she's the kind of wimp whose nose would wrinkle at the promise of chilli.) All good, fresh stuff at pleasing prices - very little on the menu costs more than £8.50 and much is at half that.
So, do I prefer it to Tayyab's? In one way, yes. Tayyab's is a boisterous, noisy experience. It is crowded and they are, though polite, eager to see you on your way once the last crumb has passed your lips. Nobody goes to Tayyab's for a relaxed evening out. Maida, a cool, calm space of black wood tables and marble floors and funky if understated lighting, is a far more gentle proposition. They want you to linger.
And then there's the dessert menu. Of course they have the usual Indian repertoire, most of which is merely proof that if you take anything - grated carrot, soft cheese, the Hanger Lane gyratory system - and drench it in enough sugar syrup, the result will be a confection of some kind. But they also have a list of outrageous milkshakes. The idea is simple. Choose your sweet-shop favourite - a Snickers bar, say, or a Bounty - and they will pop it in the blender with a cowful of dairy products. We chose the Maltesers, and the result was shameful. It is the crystal meth of desserts. It is type 2 diabetes in a glass. It is the sort of thing your naughty auntie would do for you when your parents were out for the day.
This, we concluded, was their replacement for alcohol. As with Tayyab's, there is no booze on the menu, though at Tayyab's they do at least have a bring-your-own policy. Maida is completely dry. They won't even have it on the premises. Instead, they offer consenting adults a category-A sugar rush, which sent us out into the night on a giggly high.
Those milkshakes alone are a reason for going to Maida. And the chops aren't half bad, either. Just don't let the folk from Tayyab's know I said so.
· Jay Rayner will be talking about restaurant reviewing and food in fiction at Villandry, 170 Great Portland Street, London W1 (020 7631 3131) at 11am on 12 May
