The Mogul, Tanner Row, York

If the words Nexus, Edward's and McMillans mean nothing to you, and Toffs sounds like the friendly nickname for a high-class gym, then The Mogul will probably not have appeared on your York dining radar.

This restaurant is slap bang in the middle of some of the city's livelier drinking haunts. At the backdoor of the revitalised Micklegate run, yards from the Rougier street taxi run and a useful refuelling station on the sloping walk to Toffs nightclub.

It makes no bones about offering reasonable food, at a keen price with friendly service. With a take-away option too, it has built up a solid reputation among York's discerning curry crowd and harnessed a pub-like group of regulars.

On Friday and Saturday nights it stays open deep into the small hours and a fly on these extravagantly-papered walls would probably have some colourful tales to tell. Call me jaded, but a clue to weekend customers appears in the window in the form of a thank you card.

The grateful well-wisher writes: "Just a card to say thank you for looking after me in your restaurant on Saturday night - Sunday morning after I was ill. I was very sorry for that. I was very drunk also."

While the mind may boggle at what actually happened, there is one thing I know for certain: the people who run The Mogul could teach some of York's finest eateries a thing or two about customer service.

All right, the decor might be a bit tired, the toilets are a bit stinky (and very blue) and some of the furniture has seen better days, but The Mogul offered a genuinely warm welcome from staff who seemed happy to be there and delighted to be able to help.

A few quiet drinks at York's riverside castle of beer, The Maltings, (just a drunken stagger away) put our stomachs in receive mode, so we went for some chole bhature and onion bhajees (both £2.10) to tide us through until substantial food could arrive.

Chole bhature comprises large chick peas in a mild curry with a deep fried flat bread. This makes up for all the oil you've missed out on by eating chick peas instead of meat. I recommend it. The bhajees were small, tasty and not too floury.

Catherine and I then shared a Tandoori butter chicken (£7.50), lamb khari gosht (£5.95) and a side dish of motor paneer brinjal (£2.50). Pilau rice and garlic naan bread (£1.95) gave us something to mop it all up with.

The expensive butter chicken, chosen from the special menu, was the only disappointment of the evening. I found the chicken over-cooked with the coconut-flavoured sauce just too thin.

But the lamb khari gosht easily made up for it with thick, tender chunks of meat in a dark and rich sauce with big pieces of peppers and onion.

The side dish featured chunks of homemade cheese, which is like heavy Tofu, cooked with chick peas and aubergine and makes a savoury, mild and refreshing accompaniment to the heavy main meat dishes.

For the sweet-toothed there's a selection of frozen ice-cream deserts which cost £2 or £3 on a glossy menu familiar to any curry fan, and enough coffee variations to keep even the weakest soul awake until he or she gets home.

We visited on a Tuesday night after a Bank Holiday weekend, so The Mogul was quiet with just a dozen customers, plus a long table of students sipping water (yes, really) and counting out their change as they split the bill.

Well, those youngsters know value when they see it as our bill came to just £26.40, including a pint and a half of Cobra lager, which as beer fans will know, is less gassy so that curry eaters don't inflict their loved ones with beery burps. Or something like that.

The busy staff were attentive, talkative and to be honest, a bit embarrassingly deferential at times. The Mogul is a good place for a feed, just don't treat Laurence Llewellyn Bowen to a meal there.

Fact File:

Food: average

Service: enjoyable

Value: reasonable

Ambience: curious

Disabled facilities:no

The Mogul, 39 Tanner Row, York. Telephone 01904 659622.

Chris visited on May 27, 2003.

Updated: 09:51 Saturday, June 07, 2003