Emily's

Emily's is the principal restaurant of Rokeby Manor, the heritage boutique hotel on the Landour ridge. The building dates from 1840 - among the oldest surviving structures in Mussoorie - and the dining room occupies the first floor of the manor with Alpine chalet-style interiors: real wood floors and ceiling beams, intricate exposed stone walls, deep upholstered armchair seating around a working fireplace, and tall windows that catch the morning sun on the Doon Valley below.

The cooking is Indian and continental in the heritage Anglo-Indian register that the older British hill-station kitchens developed and the contemporary boutique-hotel scene has refined. The signatures are warming evening dishes - chicken stroganoff in the older European register, shepherd's pie with a careful potato gratin top, slow-braised lamb shank with mountain herbs - plus the local naanzaa (Landour's distinctive thin-crust pizza on naan dough) which has become a Mussoorie institution since the heritage cafes started serving it in the 2000s.

The drinks programme is shorter than at the Tavern but accurate - a useful international wine list of around forty references, a small but considered Champagne pour, a serious Indian wine selection and a careful single-malt cellar. The room is also a Sunday afternoon tea destination - the high tea service runs the heritage British-Indian tea-house programme at the highest standard in Landour.

Service is the boutique hotel register - warm, knowledgeable, never rushed, with long-tenured staff who know the heritage hotel intimately. For a heritage Landour birthday or a quiet anniversary stay, the Rokeby Manor room and an Emily's dinner is among the most considered weekend bookings in north India.

Emily's is the heritage Landour birthday dinner. The 1840 stone-and-wood Alpine chalet interior, the carved wood floors and beams, the intricate stone walls and the warm fireplace seating combine into the most architecturally complete heritage hotel dining room in the hills. The Indian and continental programme - chicken stroganoff, shepherd's pie, the local naanzaa pizzas - is run at a careful boutique-hotel register.