I wanted to hear tales of campsite curries and elephant escapades over sizzling plates of charcoal-cooked chicken and ice-cold lassi, so when the man who has made two trips riding elephants across India asked: 'Do we have to eat Indian?' I insisted, feeling rather like a stubborn pachyderm. The description of campsite cuisine by Mark Shand, author and champion of the Asian elephant's fight for survival, could in no way compete with the delights of the Mughal Room restaurant. Still wary of my choice, he said: 'North Indian cooking can be very rich, as they use a lot of ghee [clarified butter]. I prefer simpler food with less oil.' Once mollified with air-conditioning and a Kingfisher, 'the king of beers', Mr Shand agreed it was quite an appropriate lunch venue as the Mughals, who came from China and Mongolia and were the old rulers of India until the 18th century, when the East India Company and later Britain became the new rulers of the subcontinent. The Mughals themselves were renowned far and wide as great elephant riders. Mr Shand once rode an elephant named Tara 1,000 kilometres across India. He returned a second time to India to ride another elephant, Kanchen, across the mammal's northern migratory route to make an awareness-raising documentary about the rapid decline in Asian elephant numbers. The Mughal Room, which opened in 1992, specialises in food of the Mughal Empire: prolonged cooking over charcoal fires to keep the flavour and juices of the food, also cream, ghee and nuts feature in the sauces, making it a particularly rich type of Indian cooking. This first-floor Indian restaurant on Wyndham Street has been decorated with restraint - Indian window frames and, appropriately, a few elephant statues. Banquettes add to the comfort and the waiters wear traditional shalwars. At one end of the restaurant the kitchen has a large window, through which you can catch glimpses of culinary activity. When travelling in India on an elephant, the elephant, not the rider, dictates where to eat. 'You have to make camp by water and by trees of any kind. You always feed the elephant first, they eat the same food every day,' said Mr Shand. 'But you should never short-change them, as the elephant will know. Elephants are migratory and naturally have a balanced diet by eating different types of vegetation throughout the year. 'They can eat 300 kilograms of food a day: branches, leaves, salt and water are their main diet, but they eat anything. Tara ate my radio and it still worked - just needed cleaning,' said Mr Shand. Only a plate of crisp, hot frazzled strips of battered fried onions - bhajis ($30) - in which you could actually taste the prime ingredient, could divert my attention from Mr Shand's mesmerising voice. Murgh fritters ($50) were another worthwhile distraction with their pale-orange crisp egg batter which masked delicate pieces of spicy chicken. Lamb samosas ($30) were generous conical pastries of finely minced lamb and spices. Machi pakora ($55) were marinated pieces of fish. The fish was meltingly tender under its orange chickpea-batter canopy. The Assam noodles ($50), which looked like tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce, were overcooked and lacked spice. Mr Shand, who says he is no cook, best enjoyed roasted eggs while in India - eggs cooked in their shells in the fire's ashes. 'India is like the food - so diverse, people so hospitable, everywhere you go, they give you food. We ate the same thing when travelling - dhal, rice, vegetables, and occasionally we'd buy a goat or a chicken,' he said. Mr Shand had us enthralled by tales of the lengths elephants will go to in order to get an alcoholic drink - even breaking into bunkers at night - when the murgh tikka ($85) arrived. 'This should sizzle,' he said, and it did: great chunks of red chicken danced on a bed of fried onions resting on a black cast-iron dish. The chapatis were fresh and hot and cut into quarters - not of the dimensions to make frisbees for the elephant, which was a common evening pastime. Tandoori gobhi ($55) also sizzled - spicy char-grilled florets of cauliflower on a bed of fried onions. It must surely be one of the most innovative ways to serve this much-abused vegetable. We finished with a cup of masala tea ($42). 'I made the tea once for the camp. I boiled up river water with black tea and spices but didn't let it soak, and was never asked to make tea again,' Mr Shand said. Swept away by elephant tales, we had probably ordered in excess as we could not finish. Our lunch bill came to $968 for three people, with no elephants on the Hong Kong horizon to bear us away. The Mughal Room, I/F Carfield Commercial Building, 75-77 Wyndham Street, Central. Tel: 2524-0107. Hours: noon-2.30pm, 6pm-11pm