Editor's note: Taal has now closed.

I've only recently become aware of Pakhtoonian cuisine - a hybrid of north West Indian food and Afghan border region dishes which focus heavily on dried spices, meat and cream. Our education in this has principally come from the excellent Tagore in Tunbridge Wells, but the discovery of Taal on an aborted pub lunch outing to the nearby Orson Welles meant that we once again had an opportunity to immerse ourselves in this fabulous cuisine.

On Sundays Taal do a very reasonably priced lunchtime buffet (free for under ten year olds) and the sight of us trundling in with our legion of junior agents (normally to be met with downcast glances and sighs) didn't faze the staff one bit. In fact they were utterly delightful. Although we were the only customers in the place, within ten minutes a heaving table of dishes emerged - with tikka, rice, tarka daal, potato and spinach, a fantastically luscious chicken coconut curry all bubbling away - and with no expense spared in quality of ingredients, honest and genuinely spicy flavours and none of that "has been sitting around for ages" feel that you get in your local gravy house. I got boringly fixated with the spicy tomato chutney that came with the popadums - I asked the waiter about the ingredients - he said "tomato mostly - with a bit of garlic". It was out of this world. M