It is probably fanciful to think the new Helen Mirren film, The Hundred-Foot Journey, the premiere of which she and I attended this week, though not strictly together, was inspired even a little by my story of the Pakistani brothers Wahid.
There are similarities, but only fleeting ones. Born Shahzad and Jawad, the brothers - sons of a Foreign Legionnaire who Frenchified them by renaming them Sylvestre and Jonathan as he settled his family in France - proved great hits as chef de cuisine and chef pâtissier at l'Oustau de Baumanière in Les Baux de Provence.
In the book on which the film is based, Richard C Morais takes an Indian family from Mumbai, plants them in another beautiful Provençal location and sets them up in opposition to the established, high-end French restaurant across the road. We again have two brothers, one of whom becomes a superchef as did Sylvestre, but they stick to their own culinary traditions, whereas the basis for the Wahids' expertise was classical French cuisine.
I enjoyed the film. Produced by Oprah Winfrey, directed by Lasse Hallströmm, it looks splendid, has wonderful acting from Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon and whets the appetite for Indian food. Do not expect depth; the screenplay is awash with stereotypes and the effect is occasionally pantomimish. But you leave the cinema, or at least I did, feeling better than on arrival.
One of the clichés at play is the notion of France being deeply resistant to Indian food. Readers with long memories will recall my own little search of the country for an Indian restaurant comparable with the better basic curry houses of Britain. The French have a perfectly good excuse - their colonial tradition makes couscous as easy to find as a tandoori in the UK - but have also made modest progress.
I have just had the chance to make a quick comparison between two Indian restaurants, one in west London, the other behind the harbour of Saint-Tropez. It proved an interesting exercise.
* Location: the Gandhi is next door to one of the better known of Saint Trop nightspots, the VIP Room, which plasters images of the A, B and Z list stars who have been there. That doesn't really impress, but the proximity of the picturesque harbourfront does. Monty's is close to Ealing Broadway station. 8/10 for the Gandhi, 6.5/10 for Monty's
* Welcome: equally warm. Both restaurants have been in business for decades and know how to treat customers. 8/10 and 8/10
* Food:
a) there is no finer Indian starter known to me than prawn puri, though I always take care to ensure the sauce for mine is not sweetened. Monty's was superb. The nearest the Gandhi got to it was prawns pakoda, also tasty but less refined and, well, less good. 7/10 and 9/10
b) My tandoori chicken was poor, the meat burnt and the flavours diminished. Madame Salut's chicken Madras was good but not exceptional. Our chicken tikka and thali choices in Saint-Tropez were marginally more successful that the Madras, infinitely better than my charred tandoori. 7/10 and 5/10
3) accompaniments: the nan in France was buttery enough to melt in the mouth, and came free with the thali, the Gandhi's garlic version merely adequate. No noticeable difference in the quality of the rice. A half-litre of basic rose at €9.50 (Saint-Tropez) and £14 bottle of Spanish Manto red (Ealing) were of broadly equivalent value 7.5/10 and 7/10
* Service: good at the Gandhi, outstanding at Monty's, where the Nepalese waiter instantly knocked £4.58 per cent off the £6.75 tandoori dish without hint of a request from me. 8/10 and 9/10
* Value for money: €41.22, even with a shared bottle of Indian beer as a greedy apéritif is a snip in the rip-off south of France. Coffees pushed up the bill a little at Monty's but a London meal for two at £67.50 is still reasonable. 7/10 each.
So my ratings work out with only a wafer-thin margin between the two, but the Gandhi of Saint-Tropez nudging ahead with an average of 7.5 out of 10 against Monty's 7.35. It being a rough and ready exercise, we might even call it a draw, but it's more fun to have a winner so the Gandhi it is.
And let me know what you make of the film.
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