Amaya, Motcomb Street, London

Dinner for two, without drinks, £106

I like Indian street food—but not enough to eat it. At least not in India. There's something about the almost instantaneous switch from happy homo erectus to crumpled ball of dribbling disease that's wholly unappetising. The scent and the vast queues lure you in. How can so many locals be wrong? So you chance a chutney-smeared dosa from the fat man's rickety stall, a fly-sputum encrusted kebab, and a market biryani with one or two unidentifiable hard bits that are most definitely not star anise. And you feel good. You've cracked India. And then India cracks you.

Indian street food is the concept at Michelin-starred Amaya. The idea is that you get each dish when it's ready, not in the order you've requested it.

A tandoori half-duck, which has spent the last hour cooking in three different tandoors, arrives impeccably charred, as if finished by blowtorch. But the tandoori monkfish steals the show. Immense, meaty chunks of marinated fish are served unadorned—unmatchable.

We get an over-seasoned bowl of corn and chilli pak choi, and a slightly weird lamb dori kebab, served on a banana leaf, which tastes OK, but has the smooth consistency of paté. Apparently the dish was born in Hyderabad, chiefly to appease the more dentally challenged members of the royal family.

We get a curry and a rice dish to finish, although by this point it's becoming a battle. Our waiter seems to have smelled our capitulation. He's over in a flash, scraping the remains from the bottom of the dish onto our plates. "It's the nicest part," he says proudly. And it is. Oily, sticky clumps of burnt rice, caramalised onions and spices. It just about does for dessert.

David Woodward