Eastern elegance
Emily Todhunter is cross. She has just noticed the receptionist dragging a mop across the expensive cherry wood and stone staircase in her latest restaurant. "She shouldn't be doing that. It ruins the wood," she mutters.
Emily Todhunter cares about details like that. She cares about her restaurants - even though she designs rather than owns them - and she particularly cares about Tamarind, a Northern Indian restaurant that opened just before Christmas.
There are few Northern Indian restaurants in the UK. Most are Bangladeshi and few are upmarket. Tamarind is an upmarket, Northern Indian restaurant in an out-of-the-way spot in Mayfair. And it looks like no other restaurant, Indian or otherwise.
Tamarind is sumptuous. Subtle and contemporary are not words usually associated with Indian restaurants. But they're two of Todhunter's favourite words.
There's no reproduction folksiness here. Todhunter and Robert Wauters, general manager of London's Halcyon hotel, whose aristocratic Indian owners have stumped up a large but discreetly undisclosed amount of money that backs this restaurant, spent hours poring over botanical books on the sub-continent before they came up with a motif that felt right.
A simple spice seed or pod - a motif that often occurs in Indian decorative work - became the inspiration for a logo, the door handles, ashtrays and wall lights in blackened wrought iron. A whirling seed motif features in the wrought-iron railings on the stairway. It is also picked up in the slim plaster frieze strip that follows the walls of the restaurant.
Todhunter says: "I wanted an Indian shape that translates very well into a contemporary setting." Everything else is sand, or shades of it, with the odd flash of brilliant colour. "It's very typical of the north-west frontier of India," says Wauters. "Scorched earth and shades of brown, and then bursts of colour." A scorched-tree arrangement by the bar, created by designer Cameron Shaw, adds to the effect.
Todhunter says: "I wanted it to be a contemporary place that expressed the essence of India. One way to keep it contemporary is to keep a subtlety. There is nothing pictorial on the walls. That smoothness is tranquil, smart."
With decoration kept to a minimum, Todhunter had "a lot of fun playing with textures". The curving walls are plaster, with a specialist marbled finish courtesy of master plasterer Mauro Perucchetti. Several large, oval pillars, with a distressed gold-leaf and brass-colour finish, are a key feature of the room. Todhunter says: "I gave the builders a beaten golden earring of mine, and said ‘I want a finish like that'." The floor is made of warm, golden oak boards with plenty of grain. The intimate bar is unusually clad in tan leather squares from leather specialist Bill Amberg.
Large, wrought-iron chairs stand in front of white-draped tables, their seats a handsome tanned hide. The bespoke chairs are made by David Pettit, and cost about £110 each. There's a regal curve to their backs and legs. There's a similar curve in the legs of matching wrought-iron bar stools, with which Todhunter is not entirely happy. "They're not macho enough," she frowns.
Todhunter has a refreshingly down-to-earth presence. Although she hasn't designed many restaurants, the ones she has - Daphne's in Fulham, Christopher's in Covent Garden - get noticed. And her attention to detail is usually uppermost in their praise.
Annie Foster-Firth, general manager at Daphne's, says: "She's got a great understanding of what the client wants, plus what the people who come into the restaurant want." Todhunter knows that the chairs must be comfortable, and that they must put the customer at elbow-height to the table.
She also knew she wanted somewhere where the light was subtle, warm and flattering. People want to look good when they sit down to a meal. Lighting is the key. Sally Storey of Lighting Design Limited masterminded the light fixtures, including some exotic, sari-clad light boxes on the walls. Two gilded frames on either side of the room feature large expanses of shot sari silk that glows pink, orange and red, backlit with tiny fibre optic lights.
There are no spotlights or recessed downlighters reflecting off plates and cutlery. Storey placed downlighters at the curved edge of the walls and on the gilded columns. In the main restaurant ceiling, four modern "chandeliers" designed by Storey provide sparkle without dazzling.
Everything is attached to an expensive dimmer system with six settings that create markedly different moods. The bright, lunchtime setting dispels any gloom that the basement location might cause. The night-time setting is much lower, and throws emphasis on the copper tones of the pillars and glowing sari panels. It's very romantic, particularly when each table is set with simple liquid-oil candles in transparent glass globes.
Todhunter chose everything, right down to plates and cutlery. And she chose them with their ageing ability in mind. She likes the fact that cast-iron ashtrays are acquiring more character as people use them. To her, that's very Indian - a land of intense contrasts, of finery and squalor. She has visited India and found it "a magical experience".
She hunted out the few Indian artefacts that have been allowed in, almost all of them functional: a smiling wooden goddess figure to flag up the ladies' loos, a god for the men's.
"It has to be a very international Indian restaurant. You can come here and not like Indian food, and still love the place," Todhunter says.
And it seems people do. In the few weeks since it opened, Wauters has had offers to repeat the design and food combination in Paris and Houston. "We'll see how the first six months go," he says.
The signs are good, though. Pat Chapman, chairman of London's Curry Club, has dined there twice. "This is the kind of place you could take the high commissioner for India," he says. "We've not seen that before."
