I have meant to go to the India Club restaurant for a long time. It's one of those places that keeps appearing on lists in the restaurant sections of magazines. Lists like - secret London retaurants, cheapest London meals, dinner for under a tenner etc. If you read enough of these lists you are left with the impression that it's dirt cheap, good Indian food in an unusual place for those in the know. Which, to some degree it is. It claims to be the oldest Indian restaurant in the UK and is situated at the bottom end of the Strand on the second floor of the Strand Continental Hotel, a hotel which is a lot less grand than its title suggests. If you were not looking for it you would walk straight past, so I don't think the India Club gets much passing trade. The clientele must all have read the lists. You go up a couple of flights of stairs and enter what looks like an old school canteen - yellowish walls, ancient fifties-looking (though posssibly much older) ceiling and a scattering of bare tables with stained purple velour seating. I think the floor is linoleum. Interesting Indian pictures appear here and there, including one of Ghandi. From where we were sitting we could also see into the kitchen - but not in a trendy 'hey, we're cool chefs pan-frying everything' kind of way but a 'we can't be bothered to get a door' kind of way. Interesting.

The menu is short. No starters to speak of and the dishes are definitely cheap, hovering around the £6 mark. There is no license either so you bring your own booze and that keeps the cost angled southerly too. However, one of the reasons that the dishes are cheap is that they are small. Simple economics, really. My Chicken Madras was not huge and it was not too wonderful either. It wasn't exactly bad but I have definitely had better elsewhere. My naan bread was also on the modest side and I doubt it was made on the premises. I also had rice, which was heaped up on a large dish - but it was large because two of us had asked for rice and they had put them together. Had they been served singly the effect might have been one of more paucity. We'll never know. I think it is worth a visit because it is different, it is a curiosity and it certainly has a history, even if it's only one of being on lots of lists. But you can get more and better elsewhere for not a lot more money - so although it is cheap I have rated it as average, based on how much you get for your money. Harry