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Debu's Nouvelle Indian Cuisine

552 Mount Pleasant Rd., Toronto. 416-927-9340.

Dinner for two with wine,

tax and tip, $80.

Poor Debu Saha. If I were he, the chef/owner of a new high-end Indian restaurant on Mount Pleasant Road with the doo-doo having just hit the fan in the economy, I would consider falling upon my sword. Even before the market tanked, the place was chronically empty. Could this be because not too many people in north Toronto are excited about three ways halibut for $29 or lamb vindaloo with some serious chatchkas for $30?

Greg Couillard can get away with charging $30 for mysteries of the subcontinent, but he's a) in Hazelton Lanes and b) possesses a pre-existing big culinary name. Debu Saha and Greg Couillard have one thing in common: They're both great cooks. But where Couillard has spent decades building a following, Chef Saha, with no reputation and no history, opened an Indian restaurant on a restaurant-wasteland strip of Mount Pleasant.

To make matters worse, his menu is ill-conceived. Three ways samosa. Three ways paneer. Three ways halibut. Three ways foie gras In an Indian restaurant It hardly matters how great most of it tastes when you're sitting in an empty dining room with a ham-handed waiter serving three ways quail that he can't quite explain: 1) perfectly cooked tandoori leg and breast with spicy house-made green mango salsa, 2) pan-seared stuffed with ground lamb and glazed with molasses and 3) a golden golf ball of deep-fried quail stuffed with fabulously spiced root veg, garnished with piquant cucumber onion salad. This is an appetizer

Maybe Toronto just isn't ready for $30 lamb vindaloo. This is two thick chops served with a credible ground-lamb spring roll with spiced fruit sauce, a tiny tart of tomato and goat cheese and assorted veg.

The waiter brings it with a cute little copper pot, from which he ladles the hot vindaloo sauce onto the lamb. The sauce is dark and complex, but to my (perhaps untutored) palate, the lamb chops and the vindaloo sauce don't need each other.

I'd rather have a great traditional curry.

Does chef Saha stoop to regular curries? It's hard to find them amid all the this 'n' that "three way" gourmania on his menu. Duck confit in Lucknow-style gravy? That's a bit of a hard sell. But check out the takeout menu, for there are curries galore, and none of the chef's self-indulgence.

His shrimp curry is big fat shrimps in curry that has just enough coconut for creaminess, jazzed with a lot of fresh ginger. His eggplant is thin firm Chinese eggplants in spicy tomato sauce studded with uncooked cherry tomatoes and toasted black mustard seeds. Firm little okras (a much under-appreciated veg that is usually horribly overcooked) are flattered by assertive curry with young ginger shreds.

House-made apple chutney (very cooked down apple with a hint of cinnamon) does wonders for chicken biryani topped with browned onion shreds, fresh coriander leaves and toasted cardamom pods. Chef's other house-made sauces - hot coriander chutney and sweet grated mango chutney - are also a big cut above the average. As is everything he does.

The irony is that if Debu Saha were to lower his ambitions and lose the gourmet aspirations, his fantastic curries would find fans who would get what a great cook he is. He's so busy proving his epicurean credentials that his great skills are being ignored. Sell the takeout curries in the restaurant A dish as simple as cauliflower curry becomes divine in his hands, the cauliflower lightly caramelized yet still crisp and cleverly topped with barely cooked sweet green peas. He caramelizes garlic, cooking it down to bring out the sweetness, as a base for lamb curry with wilted greens. More garlic makes a welcome appearance in very garlicky naan.

Even butter chicken, the most commonplace of curries, rises above the ordinary in chef Saha's hands, hot, spicy, almost sinfully creamy.

He marinates chicken kebabs in mint, yogurt and almond paste for sweet/sour zing and elevates lentils to new highs thanks to fresh tomato, ginger and chilies.

Chef Saha's food is to other curries what the Taj Mahal is to the ROM Crystal. His curries are ungreasy and complex, with big strong distinct flavours. Although his current definition of nouvelle Indian encompasses silly fripperies, better to redefine it as using the freshest possible ingredients with traditional curry techniques. Which chef Saha does brilliantly. He takes his place in the emerging pantheon of fantastic Indian cooks in Toronto. Just rein him in a little.