Hot Stuff, 19 Wilcox Road, Vauxhall, London, SW8 (020 7720 1480)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £28
If you were to judge a restaurant solely by the wine I was drinking in it, you would assume Hot Stuff to be one of those places where dinner can not begin until you have been served something to amuse your big, fat bouche, and a fair proportion of the humungous bill has gone on paying an interior designer to do something unnecessary with curtains the colour of stained teeth. This is because the bottle on my table was a fine Pomerol.
Hot Stuff is not that kind of place. It is a simple, neighbourhood Indian restaurant in Vauxhall. It sits on the type of South London shopping parade that the locals won't hear a word against, and which makes visitors from leafier parts of town feel edgy. It is unlicensed. Therefore you have to bring your own, though they charge no corkage. (They barely seem to charge for anything at all.) I quickly calculated that I could pop into the local Sainsbury's and pick up a bottle of something for less than the sort of money I would usually pay in most other restaurants, and drink very well indeed. And so, to go with my chilli chicken and my lamb with butternut squash, I bought a chunk of Bordeaux which, on most lists, would weigh in at the best part of £70 but had cost me £20.
That's one reason to like Hot Stuff, but there are many others. The restaurant is a cult; enough of a cult, I should say, not to need me there. It can seat no more than a couple of dozen and clearly doesn't desire any extra bums on seats. Still, I had heard about it so often that I wanted to go there. The problem with a word-of-mouth phenomenon like Hot Stuff, of course, is that its virtues can become hyped beyond all possible hope of attainment, and a little of that has happened here. Have a look at restaurant review websites and you will see its fans describe it as one of the best Indian restaurants in London. It isn't that.
Instead, what it manages to be is truly idiosyncratic. In a land where an 'Indian' restaurant still means furry wallpaper, migraine-inducing swirly carpets and the pluck of sitars it is refreshing to walk into a square room, full of Formica topped tables and plastic chilli peppers hanging from the fairy-lit ceiling. Those tables are packed tightly together and laden with flaky naan breads the size of African elephants' ears, and the menus have a gloriously well-thumbed quality. Other than the smarty-pants on the corner table with the Pomerol, most people drink beer, bought from the off-licence next door.
The family which runs Hot Stuff has its roots in the Indian communities of East Africa, although there is nothing on the menu to indicate that. It is the usual collection of kormas, jalfrezis and bhindis. Almost nothing costs more than £6 and all of it has the authentic, crisp zing of a kitchen that cares. The seafood in a starter of king prawns in garlic and chilli, which could easily have been fried off to a squash-ball rubberiness, still had all their bite, and a fierce, fiery heat. The same crash of flavour was there in a plate of chilli chicken, even if, as my companion noted, the meat itself was of less than the finest quality. Let's be clear: when you are paying £4 for a plate of chilli chicken you are not paying for the finest damn bird in the land. It's your choice.
A dun-coloured karai chicken had a gloopy quality, but a hard-knuckled stew of long-cooked tender lamb with sweet butternut squash made up for it. This was comfort food that both soothed and invigorated. A bowl of daal had a ripe, nutty flavour and breads were soft and fresh, with those crisp bubbles of smoky, burnt dough that help build the flavour. We had seen no desserts on the menu, which is just as well because they are usually such a letdown in Indian restaurants. We asked for the bill and received instead a visit from the boss, who did a quick mental calculation and said £25. We didn't argue. At that sort of price there is simply nothing to argue about.
· This article was amended on Monday January 28 2008. We said that the meal for two described in the review above cost £125. This should have read £28. This has been corrected.