Douglas Williams/Shanghai Daily news

Inidan Vintage restaurant opened on Tongren Road just more than a month ago and is now hitting its stride serving genuine Indian cuisine using ancient recipes and time honored secrets.
This is owner Deepak Dharamdasani’s first restaurant and it took him eight months of searching to find it.
“When my wife (Heena) said she thought this was the place I knew I was onto something,” said Dharamdasani, former cricket ace originally from Mumbai, business man, globe trotter and someone who knows whose counsel he can trust.
With many friends in the business but without much restaurant experience (other than eating in them) it was straight to the top and not so close to home when Dharamdasani was looking for advice on the menu.
“We knew Grand Master Chef Murgh Imtiaz who is at the Sheraton in Mumbai. He has cooked for many of India’s great leaders (Indira and Rajiv Ghandi included) and comes from a long line of Awadhi Royal cooks. Although we couldn’t prize his secrets from him we spoke with his sons, the heirs to his recipes, and they know most of their great father’s secrets.
They helped us put together the menu,” said Dharamdasani, keen to point out that it’s Mrs Dharamdasani who has done all the work in getting the restaurant up and running.
The magical and mysterious process of acquiring, grinding and mixing of the dozens of herbs employed is essentially the difference between good and not so good Indian food.
Indian Vintage food is excellent.
Tongren Road might share a number of characteristics with those of a cheap, tacky package holiday destination but like it or lump it there’s a lot going on there at night and adding curry to the equation can only Currying flavor on Tongren benefit the street.
What better way to kick the night off (or conclude it) than with a curry. Last orders for food is 11.30pm.
“I was nervous about the location to begin with but the thing is that out there is out there and in here is in here,” said Dharamdasani.
Sensibly, there is a security presence in the restaurant ensuring any trouble outside stays there.
Downstairs has a bar, cocktails, TV and Buddha Bar type music, relaxed and tasteful while upstairs is a solid, spacious exemplary Indian restaurant.
Stone floor, heavy wooden tables and a color scheme that’s a relaxing, clay pink.
For most new (and some not so new) restaurants in Shanghai, staffing is the main problem and it was the blight of Indian Vintage upon opening till Dharamdasani sussed out an ingenious incentive program.
Staff get one yuan per dish that’s served; it’s figured out over the month and makes a tasty addition.
“Great food with bad service is just wasting everybody’s time,” Dharamdasani said. Other restaurateurs pay heed — this scheme focuses minds naturally.
A three-tier lunch menu 50 yuan (US$6.17), 60 yuan and 70 yuan for one, two or three courses is served 11:30am to 2:30pm.
I started with the mixed tandoor kebabs. I was also very nearly finished by the mixed tandoor kebabs.
Indian food doesn’t mess about on the filling front. Chicken, beef, lamb, duck and fish each coated in their respective spices and slowly cooked maintaining succulence and flavor, the duck adding value and the best by a nose.
One of Murgh Imtiaz’s signature dishes and featuring on the menu with his name is a chicken fillet wrapping mozzarella and green chutney, Dharamdasani’s favorite and good but not mine.
My favorite was probably the simplest dish on the menu — black dal — as un-bland as un-bland gets and perfection swabbed up by a nan bread.
Lamb rogan josh with a strength of tomato that cut through the lamb. Desert was a banana creme brulle and kulfa; the former like baby food though far from disagreeable; the latter like solidified evaporated milk for the simple reason it pretty much is.
Starter prices around the 50 yuan mark, mains around 100 yuan.
Vintage Indian offers quality food in plush surroundings.

Address: No. 76 Tongren Road
Tel: 6247 0140