At the table - Queen of W1 expands empire with chic Italian

I understand it's not the done thing to compare restaurateurs to murderous mob bosses, given it's rude and, well, they're notoriously litigious. But when I think of Samyukta Nair, sometimes I hear Jack Nicholson's mutterings in The Departed, Martin Scorsese's Boston gangster flick. "I don't want to be a product of my environment," Nichol- son says. "I want my environment to be a product of me."

- DAVID ELLIS

It is a fitting motto for Nair. The elegant restaurateur - who, as far as I can tell, has never run a bloodthirsty crime syndicate, though you never know - takes a cheerfully hands-on approach to her Mayfair territory. Mumbai-born Nair has been a W1 regular since she was a little girl, and today lives in a flat close by Hyde Park. This is not a story Dickens would have latched onto.

The restaurants she owns with her father Dinesh - their company is LSL Capital - are all within walking distance of this flat, or perhaps a short chauffeured drive. She has Bombay Bustle and Jamavar, both excellent Indians; Koyn (upstairs Japanese, downstairs Thai) and Mi Mi Mei Fair, a Cantonese jewel box that draws a low-key crowd - Hailey and Justin Bieber, those types - where dim sum looks like jewellery and the duck has diamond skin. Nair loves to eat out, and in all styles. Where she has found her postcode wanting, she has built what she is after. Slowly, Nair's environment is becoming a product of her.