LONDON, 21 April 2003 — Feverishly busy while others sleep, Iqbal Wahhab personifies the “enterprise culture” championed by the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Three years ago, this ebullient British Muslim reinvented Indian cuisine with his ground-breaking Westminster restaurant, the Cinnamon Club. Situated close to the Houses of Parliament, the restaurant has since acquired international renown. Now, its restless 39-year-old founder, last year voted Indian restaurant personality of the year, plans to introduce New York to his innovative brand of Indian cooking.

Born in Bangladesh but brought up in south London, Wahhab studied politics at the London School of Economics. During the late 1980s, he made a name for himself in Britain as a political journalist, filing reports on the Salman Rushdie affair in the wake of the fatwa issued by the then Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini against the author of the Satanic Verses. A leading light of Britain’s ethnic minority press, he seemed destined to establish himself as a key figure in the struggle to win white British hearts and minds.

As it happened, Wahhab was subsequently to become embroiled in a small-scale (serio-comic) Rushdie affair of his own. His problems began when, during a spell as editor of an ethnic catering magazine, he decided that the Indian restaurant business needed to be jolted out of its complacency. Describing the typical Indian waiter as a “miserable git,” he wrote an impetuous editorial attacking what he considered to be the drab conservatism and woeful standards of service prevalent in British curry houses. Keen though he was to cause a stir, Wahhab could hardly have anticipated the furious acrimony he was about to encounter.

His controversial comments were taken up and exploited by right-wing British newspapers like the Daily Mail: When a member of an ethnic minority is rude about his own kind, the editors of such papers cannot believe their good fortune, and on this occasion they milked the episode for all that it was worth.

The upshot was that Wahhab managed to antagonize practically the whole of Britain’s extensive Indian restaurant trade — and not a few others besides. At a stroke, he found himself a pariah.

Unlike Salman Rushdie, Wahhab could not expect round-the-clock protection by the British police and intelligence services. Yet he, too, was up against what appeared to be genuine death threats. Despite his passion for publicity, he had no choice but to go into hiding. Small wonder Wahhab now feels much unease on the subject of Muslims and “judgmentalism.”

It was during this grim period of enforced, anxiety-ridden seclusion (no one could say that he has not suffered on behalf of his culinary beliefs) that Wahhab vowed to break the mold of British Indian restaurant culture and dreamed up the concept of the Cinnamon Club. Consumed by new-found missionary fervor, he was determined to demonstrate that there could be much more to Indian cuisine than what is on offer in the generality of curry houses; he was also eager to teach his detractors in the restaurant trade a lesson, to vindicate his charges against them by setting up an exemplary top-flight Indian restaurant of his own. Making money, he insists, was the least of his concerns at this stage.

Like so many brilliant ideas, Wahhab’s scheme was as simple as it was obvious: Why on earth hadn’t anybody thought of it before? Mindful of the example of Gallic cuisine, he envisaged a sophisticated, French-style Indian restaurant whose menu would be shaped by what fresh ingredients happened to be available at the market on a given morning, and which would be run according to impeccable professional standards, with chefs and waiters of the highest caliber.

The Cinnamon Club’s existence owes much to its proprietor’s silver tongue, to his well-honed powers of persuasion. In order to get the project off the ground Wahhab had to raise a prodigious amount of capital and had nothing — other than a vision — with which to arouse the interest of potential investors. What has made it such a signal success, however, is not just its food but also its choice location.

Occupying what was once the Westminster Public Library, the restaurant stands as near as could be to the very epicenter of British political life, and its relaxed and convivial atmosphere has made it hugely popular with so-called top people — with politicians, journalists and celebrities. Wahhab is pleased to note that most of the present British Cabinet have at one time or another dined at the Cinnamon Club — though he cannot recall Prime Minister Tony Blair having set foot in the place. Wahhab’s progress as restaurateur is all of a piece with the extravagant national obsession that the British have developed with food during the last few years. Switch on a television set in Britain and there is every chance that you will be confronted by a celebrity chef holding forth about gastronomy.

More specifically, though, his flourishing career is a tribute to Britain’s former Indian empire and to the inveterate British penchant for well-spiced Indian food. Not for nothing has chicken tikka massala been identified as latter-day Britain’s favorite national dish.

Currently hard at work on the Cinnamon Club Cook Book, Iqbal Wahhab has found that the most effective way of appealing to the hearts and minds of white Britons is through their stomachs.