It’s a strange thing that restaurants and antique dealers come at the top my Mumbai list. Everything else that matters is scrawled in inked blots at the back of my diary. My relationship with food and furniture go back to the days when my Grandma gave me a cookbook and an interior design magazine for my twelfth birthday. This is not to say that I’m a great cook. Let’s say that I enjoy good food without the effort of preparing it myself. Nor am I particularly adept at decorating. My homes in the past have had a certain style but I can’t imagine Vogue Living will ever come knocking on my door for a photo shoot in the future. I just enjoy prowling around antique and home-ware shops.

One of the attractions of moving to India was to immerse myself in the cuisine. To savour the fragnant curries, the light chapatis, and dahls. There is no better way to experience a country than through its food. Certainly Bangkok’s exquisite fish curries have lasted much longer in my memory bank than its giant, golden Budha. No sooner had I arrived in Mumbai than I purchased a copy of the Times of India Restaurant Guide and short-listed five haunts in which to discover the joys of the local take on Bombay Duck.

Then in my second week here I succumbed to a Mumbai bug. Not of the edible kind; more of the kind that bubbles away inside your stomach. Months later and I’m still struggling to look at a curry without wanting to rush to the lavatory. I am now doing India without the curries. My palate can only be satiated by a bland diet of grilled chicken and steamed vegetables. Any Indian reading my daily menu will be shocked by its monotony. I am.

Even on my featureless diet, the restaurants in Mumbai are part of the good side of living here. I’m not a foodie either. I’m the last person to ask about a new restaurant. When the Masterchef judges in Australia quiz their competitors on the different names of pasta, I stop at lasagna. But I recognise the inventive menus of Mumbai, studded with creative soups, salads and souffles. There are metaphors for the Indian landscape in every dish. The red pepper and coriander soup I ate the other night had the reddened colour of the mountains to the west of Mumbai; later on the salmon, coated in turmeric, glistened of the calm sea outside. The food in India, whether disguised as western cooking or its own culinary fare, is ingenious.

The furnishings of the restaurants here seem to balance out the drama and colour of the food too. All calm and composed, the elegant fabrics and chairs take out the heat of the spicy dishes. The bistros are like small cathedrals, places of peace and worship, out of the mayhem on the streets. Maybe I have seen copies of these restaurants before in another country? They are still definably Indian. The culture of the people and land trickles into even the most western of settings. There’s something distinctive, Indian-centred, about the manners of the table settings, the way the napkins are folded, and the arrangement of the tall candles by the edges of the bread knives.

We are moving into our apartment at the end of the week. There’s been a lot of drama over our new residence. The Landlord took a while to install the lighting. Or was it the electricity? One week of works became six weeks. I’ve been told this is India and to expect this. I hope our home, much like the restaurants of Mumbai, will be an oasis from the traffic and fumes of the streets. I have already been to a nest of antique shops to find a cabinet for our new place. The 80 year-old mahogany chest, crafted by an artisan from my grandma’s generation, costs less than a pre-assembled trunk from Ikea. Window browsing at these antique shops is now a firm fixture in my diary. Michael has already commented that we mustn’t leave India with more furniture than we brought in. I suspect I’ll be throwing out the old rattan chairs and beds to make way for the colonial collections from this well kept secret of Mumbai.