The last time that I went to Bray I remember remarking that it was odd that such a large conurbation had so few restaurants. It's just the sort of generalisation that inevitably turns out to be wrong - my wife and I found another. It happened like this: after the last Bray restaurant review I got an email from a couple who live there to tell me that they'd had a very similar experience to me, even ending up at the same table. As a post scriptum they mentioned a new Indian restaurant in the shopping centre complex and said they'd enjoyed it. I filed this away in the recesses of my mind and remembered it again this week.

Which is why we found ourselves parking outside the Sanam Tandoori in Castle Street. It's upstairs and the stairwell is decorated in the same style as the restaurant; a Sienna paint effect with a quotation from an Indian poet on the wall at the landing reading; 'I have dipped the vessel of my heart into this silent hour. It is filled with love.' Once inside the restaurant proper there's a seating area on the right as you enter, there's a small bar, and the restaurant stretches down to your left forming an 'L' shape around an open-sided kitchen. The same Sienna colour and more quotations from the poet adorn the walls, such as 'Love is life in its fullness, like a cup with its wine.' What is immediately striking is the modern and slightly austere decor. It's not that in itself it's unusual, but rather that it's unusual to find such restraint in an Indian restaurant. There are no festoons of dark carved wood, no statues of Shiva, no brightly coloured swags of material, no imitation ivory gee-gaws and no mirrors. The only nod to classical Indian restaurant interiors is a couple of murals in a naif style which serve to visually break up the long interior wall.

I started by going through the wine list, which is short but reasonably priced. There are eleven reds and eleven whites, starting at 10.95 for the house wines. Most of the wines listed are well under twenty pounds, including some of my current favourites like the Ironstone Chardonnay at £15.50 or the Jamiesons Run Pinot Noir at £17.50. There are a couple of wines that break the twenty quid barrier, but this is a list aimed very much at value for money. In the end we drank beer rather than wine, specifically Cobra beer, which according to its label comes from Bangalore, city of gardens and palaces.

As we were looking through the menu we were presented with a bowl of poppadoms and three ramekins of dips, a pickled onion, a mint yoghurt and a mango chutney. The menu begins with vegetarian starters, all under £4, with things like onion bhajis, vegetable somozas, vegetable cutlets and spicy pacoras. For non-vegetarians there's Shish kebab, barbecued minced lamb, lamb chop, chicken and tomato, tandoori chicken, chicken pacora, chicken tikka and a tandoori cocktail, mostly between £4 and £5.

Specialities come next with things like chicken lasooni, chicken moglai, kima gosht, kima palak, chicken tikka biriani or shashlik, king prawns, and a mixed tandoori sizzler. Next come Balti dishes, provincial dishes most of which can be had with beef, lamb, chicken or prawns. The brave can choose a madras vindaloo, which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'ring of fire', and all of these dishes are under a tenner. Various rices and nan breads make up the side orders. If you're the sort of person who prefers to have decisions made for you, there are several preset menus at around £50 for two which seem to cover the whole gamut of the menu.

With the help of the charming maitre (or possibly the owner) we made our choices - king prawn tandoori as a starter for Susie and onion bhajis for me. Then a chicken tikka for Susie and I rather greedily ordered the mixed tandoori sizzler, which at £13.95 was probably the most expensive dish on the menu. With our Cobra beer to hand, we sat back nibbling on the poppadoms awaiting our starters.

Susie's king prawns were tasty and spicy and she was good enough to offer me one. My bhajis were well-flavoured, but still with an oily coating, which although not unpleasant, took a little away from the dish. A variety of shredded vegetables sat alongside my bhajis, which made me wonder what they were for. Decoration, most like, as raw shreds of vegetable matter with no dressing can have little other purpose.

As soon as the table was cleared of the starters, the hot plate arrived and so did Susie's chicken tikka along with a bowl of rice. Next, with a very dramatic and theatrical sizzle, came my tandoori mixture. We did as we ought, and swapped dainty morsels and tit-bits. Certainly we both had enough food in front of us to have fed a third person, and it seemed something of a shame that we couldn't finish it. No doubt, a frisson of guilt was there as we thought of the many around the world with too little, and we with too much.

So when the dessert menu came we had little enough appetite. It was a laminated card with pictures of commercially made desserts that can be found in a wide cross-section of ethnic restaurants. Not tempting enough for people with no appetite. Just as I was about to put it to one side I noticed that it also listed some home-made Indian desserts such as khulfis. I persuaded Susie to try the pistacchio khulfi, a classic Indian pudding. I've long held the view that Indian and Italian cuisine share in common a savoury base, and that desserts are not what either nation is best at. The khulfi, basically a cold rice-pudding flavoured with pistacchio, didn't change my opinion. I was impressed, however by the attitude of the maitre, who seeing the unfinished dessert announced that he couldn't possibly charge for it.

There was no espresso to tempt me, so I finished with a cognac. It was about then that I was approached by a gentleman from another table. 'Are you Paolo Tullio?' he asked. When I told him that I was he said, 'I'm the man who sent you the email. Isn't that a weird coincidence that you should be here the same night as us?' Well maybe, but the writing was on the wall - 'Listen, my heart, to the whispers of the world...'