Ziya Esher

Ziya sits on Esher High Street, in among the shops, cafés and estate agents that make up the centre of a well-off Surrey commuter town. It is an Indian restaurant, and it presents itself as a smart one: the room and the cooking are pitched at people who want more than a curry after the pub. The existing description calls it stylish and rather glam, and that is the register to expect.

The price band is £££, which in Surrey terms puts it above the neighbourhood takeaway-with-tables and below the special-occasion tasting-menu bracket. Read it as a restaurant where you will spend properly on a meal for two, particularly once drinks are added, but not one that requires an anniversary to justify. That positioning matters in Esher, where the High Street carries a fair range of places and the difference between £ and £££ is often the difference between a quick supper and an evening out.

It is listed as being good for Indian fine dining and for date nights, and those two things sit together sensibly. A restaurant that puts care into plating and makes something of its dining room is a restaurant built for a table of two who want to sit and talk. That also makes it a reasonable choice for a small celebration, or for taking visitors somewhere that feels like a decision rather than a default.

The kitchen's stated approach is traditional recipes and traditional cooking techniques, prepared carefully, rather than reinvention. If you want Indian food that has been pulled apart and reassembled as something else, this is probably not the aim. If you want regional dishes cooked properly and served in a setting that has had thought put into it, that is what is being offered.

Practical points, and here it is worth being straight about the limits of what can be confirmed. The address is High Street, Esher. Opening hours, the current menu and booking arrangements are not among the facts available here, so check directly before you travel, a High Street restaurant in a town like Esher can be busy on a Friday and Saturday evening, and a smarter Indian restaurant is the kind of place where a weekend table is worth reserving. Parking in Esher centre is a matter of finding a space rather than pulling up outside, so allow a little time. If anyone in your party has a particular dish in mind, ring ahead rather than assume.

Esher does not lack for places to eat, but it has more of some kinds than others, and a genuinely smart Indian restaurant on the High Street fills a specific gap. Ziya's position is clear enough: it is the Indian restaurant you go to when the meal itself is the point of the evening, rather than something to fit around it. On that basis, it earns its place on the street.