Restaurant Recommendation - Geeta, London

Geeta, 57 Willesden Lane, London.
By Mike Gorman

Having grown up eating South Indian food, I'm always looking for a restaurant that reminds me of this type of home cooking.
There are a few of these in the Tooting area, since there's a South Indian community there, but the only place I've come across in the rest of London that really fits the bill for me, is Geeta.

The food is unpretentious, with sensible sized portions, incredibly reasonably priced, and very very good indeed.
Some favorites for me are Kerala Fried Lamb, Potato Vadas (sometimes known as bondas), Rasam (a spicy tamarind based soup, which is also known as pepperwater), Kerala Fish Curry, Special Chicken Curry (on the bone, which is a rarity in many indian restaurants), Prawn Madras, Dhal with spinach (an amazing combo), Lemon Rice and Coconut Rice, to name a few.
Also, virtually all of their veg dishes are stunning, and the Masala Dosai is a showpiece of the restaurant, with an incredibly light crisp pancake rolled around some sumptuous potato curry.

One thing that separates Geeta from many of the regular Indian restaurants around (many of which use a North Indian Bangladeshi style of cooking), is that all the dishes are prepared to an individual recipe, rather than the standard practice of having a single base sauce for everything and then adding precooked chicken or lamb to various spice powders and tomato puree in a big wok, which inevitably results in many dishes tasting very similar.
Some of the characteristic ingredients of South Indian food are curry leaves, mustard seeds and coconut, which are used to great effect in many of the dishes at this establishment.

Another thing worth a mention is the discretion of the staff, who are always extremely polite and helpful, but never intrusive or inappropriately over familiar.

By the way, the nearby South Indian restaurant VJ's, is also very good indeed, but in my opinion, Geeta has a more homecooked feel, and is much better value.

Mike Gorman.