Ram's

What was an unassuming community café, renowned for its southern Surti Gujarati food, has spread its wings and now includes a catering hall and sweetmeat shop next door. Today, the menu promotes Punjabi, South Indian and even Indo-Chinese choices alongside Gujarati specialties. Even the interior has been revamped, with a mash-up of twinkly blue and red lights, mirror work and flatscreen TVs.

For the best results, we suggest choosing dishes from Surat for their sweet, tangy flavours. The pani puri served here is terrific; we messily polished off crisp globes of hollow pastry, filled with diced potatoes and topped up with pungent black salt and minted tamarind water. Mains weren’t quite as memorable: the bindi kadhai, a tart, whipped yoghurt curry, thickened with roasted gram flour and simmered with okra, was alright, but would have benefited from a more stringent seasoning of popped mustard seeds and hits of red chilli.

Small dumplings of deep-fried green banana and fenugreek pakoras had pleasantly sweet notes, cut through with peppery fenugreek – but were dense in texture. Service was well meaning but erratic.