As far as I am aware Chatham has eight Indian restaurants in the town, plus one which offers both Thai and Indian cuisine (Monsoon Valley). There is another one (The Taj) in the nearby suburb of Walderslade. Of the ones in town, five are in the Chatham end of Rochester High Street. Moving along the high street from the Rochester end the first is the Akash (which is only a short distance from the Rochester based restaurants of Bombay Brasserie and Mak’s. Further along is Spice Fusion (opened 2001) ,while further along still is the Tanjore (used to be Poona) and then Monsoon Valley, which is a a little more up market restaurant serving Thai food as well as Indian.  

The high street restaurants of  Akash and Tanjore are fairly standard Indian restaurants, while Spice Fusion is a contemporary style restaurant with the now ubiquitous wooden flooring (although I haven't tried this one as I was put off by the over-pretentious menu descriptions of 'gourmet' and connoisseurs' dishes). The Monsoon Valley is probably the most stylish.  (A couple of years ago I also visited a restaurant called  Lady Chutney's a few doors along, which was an Indian Punjabi restaurant as against the more usual Bangladeshi offering more than the standard high street curry house fare. It was good, but sadly it is no more). 

Of the other four, the Royal Tandoori is situated up in New Road. This opened in August 1998,  taking over from Monument of Bangladesh (which in itself had not been there long). The restaurant is situated in an old pub and the chef has won the Medway Curry Chef competition in 2000, 2001 and 2002 (although I believe there has been a little trouble with the environmental health people since!!!). 

One of those remaining is the Ace of Spice in Watling Street. It looks fairly big having a wide frontage but I haven’t seen inside. The other is the small (22 seater) Balti Cafe in Batchelor Street.  It's chef and owner, the friendly and charming Mr Ali, came second in the 2002 Medway Curry Chef competition. The newest is Coco Diner at 330 Chatham High Street. It serves southern Indian cuisine and has a very different menu (authentic South Indian dishes) to the standard high street Indian curry houses. Despite not being in the best location in town (right at one end opposite Tesco) it is arguably the best of the lot. 

Malcolm Wilkins - July 2008