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The roads parallel to Oxford Street are a confusing place. A music venue, two Sam Smith’s pubs and a place offering ‘cryotherapy’ all jostle with each other on one stretch of road, while nearby a bizarrely huge Vapiano restaurant lights up half the street. In the middle of this strange mix is Pahli Hill, an Indian restaurant which has earned the Michelin Bib Gourmand (the star-and-tyre emporium’s ‘good food, good value’ award).

It’s not the most obvious place for an authentic, cosy Indian restaurant, but good design and a great atmosphere mean that you’ll honestly forget the outside world exists for the duration of your meal. You’ll also be so enamoured with the food that you’ll forget the restaurant exists at times, let alone the bustling shopping district just beyond its walls. 

The pork shoulder is so tender that it basically falls apart without being touched, and is slow cooked in a sauce which is just the right side of spicy, without singeing your tastebuds clean off. The tandoori chicken is equally impressive, flavoursome and moist in a way that other restaurants struggle to manage. It also comes with a cucumber salad which is honestly the most delicious way we’ve ever been served a cucumber (niche, but true).

The chicken curry is flavoursome and rich, but it’s absolutely crucial to order a bread to come with it, or you’ll likely be scooping the sauce into your mouth in a not-very-polite manner come the end of your meal. Speaking of bread, Pahli Hill can be recommended on the strength of its baked goods alone. We opt for a flaky flatbread to come with the pork shoulder and a sourdough roti to come with the curry, both at the suggestion of our well-informed and friendly waiter. The flatbread is incredible, elastic but still flaky, light but still with impressive sauce-mopping power. The roti is just as good, arriving with a sheen of melted butter and being so delicious we’d happily eat it on its own. The table next to us order the plain cone dosa, which completes the restaurant’s holy trinity of bread options. When it arrives it’s big enough to be worn as a hat and, judging by the response of the people eating it, is also very, very tasty.

If you’ve still got room after that (and we very nearly didn’t), it’s time for dessert. It’s an expansive offering at first glance, but once you realise that a bizarrely high proportion of the menu is taken up with varieties of ice cream, there’s only a few options left. Never fear, both the rice pudding and the chocolate rum cake are top notch, with the rum cake in particular being a decadently rich slab dotted with whorls of cream which will defeat even the sweetest of sweet tooths. 

Upmarket Indian restaurants have been cropping up for a few years now, with the 1970s image of starched tablecloths and Westernised dishes now a distant and unmissed memory. In their place? The Pahli Hill’s of this world, offering great food, great staff, great ambience, and generous portion sizes. Small wonder that there’s barely a free table in the place, even when we visit on a dreary Monday in January.

For more information, see here. 

79-81 Mortimer St, London W1W 7SJ