Veggie food with real class

Anyone who is genuinely puzzled that people can cope with and indeed enjoy a diet of vegetables alone should try eating at Kastoori.

Located in a rather unpromising-looking bit of town, Kastoori is a Gujarati 'Pure Vegetarian Restaurant'.

The food they serve is leavened with East African influences, and the large and cavernous restaurant is run by the admirably helpful Thanki family - do be sure to ask their advice, and act on it.

First onto the waiter's pad (and indeed first into the mouth, as they go soggy and collapse if made to wait) must be dahi puri - tiny crispy flying saucers filled with a sweet-and-sour yogurty sauce, potatoes, onions, chickpeas and so forth.

You pop them in whole; the marriage of taste and texture is a revelation.

Samosas are excellent and the onion bhajia are also a revelation - bite-sized and delicious, a far cry from the ball-of-knitting served in most High Street curry emporia.

Then make sure that someone orders the vegetable curry of the day, and others the outstanding cauliflower with cream curry and special tomato curry - a hot and spicy classic hailing from Katia Wahd.

Leave room for the chilli banana - bananas stuffed with mild chillies (an East African recipe), and mop everything up with generous helpings of puris and chapatis.

The smart move is to ask what's in season, as the menu is littered with oddities that come and go.

For example, there's a 'beans curry' subtitled 'Chef's Choice'.

Kastoori Restaurant
Upper Tooting Road, London, SW17 7EJ