Balthazar

One question often asked of best-TV-series-ever-made Buffy The Vampire Slayer was how the citizens of Sunnydale, a town unusually prone to attack from vampires, demons and the occasional robot, seemingly experienced collective amnesia after each new massacre. Die-hard fans however know that this was neatly explained very early on (Season 1, Episode 2, 'The Harvest') when Giles - Buffy's 'Watcher', or guardian - tells the Scoobies that, "People have a tendency to rationalise what they can and forget what they can't."

So with Giles' advice in mind I am writing this as quickly as possible - the morning after the horror of the night before - so that if, as I truly hope I shall, I forget everything that I can't rationalise about dinner at Balthazar, there will at least remain some record of it to warn others away from this Hellmouth of a restaurant.

Balthazar, a huge brasserie occupying the site of the old Theatre Museum just off the piazza in Covent Garden, is a near-carbon copy of the original Balthazar in New York. Why it was thought that what London really needed in 2013 was its own branch of a restaurant that was very fashionable when it opened in 1997 but nowadays is, by most accounts, strictly one for 'out-of-towners' is beyond me, but so are cooking rice and why people find Ricky Gervais funny - I don't pretend to understand everything.

I certainly don't understand what all the fuss is about the room at Balthazar, or the fabled 'buzz'; you will recognise the decor immediately if you have ever been somewhere like Bofinger in Paris, or Cafe Rouge. I am about the thousandth person now to compare Balthazar to a Cafe Rouge, but the comparison is inevitable when the shared 'I've-been-designed-to-look-like-I've-always-been-here' ersatzness is so stark. As for the 'buzz', fill a cavernous room with people and blast middle-of-the-road jazz over the speakers and of course they'll raise their voices to be heard. You say 'buzz', I say 'racket', tomato, tomato.

Already at our table when I arrived early for our booking, dinner-date Matthew explained that he had fled the adjacent bar because of over-crowding; an unwelcome import from New York is the notion that herding diners cheek-by-jowl into a holding pen before being allowed to have their dinner builds excitement, a theory as flawed as the belief that administering fear-hormone adrenaline to veal calves before slaughter will make the meat taste better.

To the eating. I cannot rationalise how a restaurant jointly operated by Keith McNally - a man who in countless, angst-soaked pre-opening interviews stressed how much of a 'perfectionist' he is - and Caprice Holdings, a company whose restaurants, almost without exception, I love, could allow such mediocre (and in the case of one dish genuinely inedible) food to be served. 

A basket of bread, from Balthazar's own bakery in Waterloo, had been brought thence so slowly or long ago that it was stale and flavourless. My starter of dressed crab was fine, likewise Matthew's chicken liver and foie gras mousse, although presentation was rather forlorn, my crab on a bed of tired lettuce with a tin pot of entirely superfluous Marie Rose sauce, Matthew's mousse a cone plonked on the plate straight from a catering mould. Accompanying red onion confit at least appeared to have been lovingly spooned from the jar.

But the main courses - oh dear, oh God. I ordered whole grilled dorade with Romesco sauce and herb salad, Matthew steak tartare with a side of frites. The fish had been grilled so long that all moisture had been obliterated, and the lemon and herb filling was so over-powering that the dorade tasted - the one mouthful I had before sending it back - as if it had been marinated in Toilet Duck. It was truly horrible, and swiftly changed for a salad Nicoise, which was OK. Matthew's anaemic, undercooked fries, too, had to be replaced and once done properly were far more enjoyable than his meagre portion of dull, dry tartare.

Unsurprisingly, we had no interest in desserts. Nor did we fancy ordering anything from the cheeseboard our waiter presented; would you want to pay £10.50 for brie or roquefort shown to you sweating under their clingfilm wrappers? I thought not. We did at least enjoy the perfectly pleasant mini cookies that came with our coffees. That at first an espresso was served instead of a macchiato came as no surprise; that our bill, for two courses (my replacement for my awful main course was still charged for), coffee, one cocktail, one glass of wine and service came to £92, did.

To give credit where credit is due, our waiter and most of the staff we came into contact with were delightful, but it is humiliating for them and for Balthazar's owners that an army of floor-walking management - from New York, I'm guessing - are trying to train them on the job. If I felt embarrassed that a manager came to the table with our waiter when he was serving our main courses and hissed, "Position 2 for the fish" out of the side of her mouth, how must he have felt? I have heard rumours of a power-struggle between the New York side of the operation and the London team over how things should be done; I didn't expect to see it played out in front of me table-side.

Never before have I left a busy restaurant - and for reasons that cannot have anything to do with the food or atmosphere Balthazar and its veal-truck bar were packed - so inclined to stand at the door and implore people to go somewhere, anywhere else. The Delaunay is just round the corner and doing the grand brasserie thing a thousand times better; hell, Tuttons bang next door is superior by several powers, and that's saying something. 

Would that London were Sunnydale and Buffy could come along and plunge her stake into the heart of this blood-sucking horror of a restaurant; then it would crumble into dust and, not being able to rationalise the sheer dreadfulness of what we had experienced, we could all just forget it had ever happened.

Balthazar, 4-6 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HZ Tel: 020 3301 1155 www.balthazarlondon.com









Posted by +Hugh Wright

Brasserie Chavot

"I knew you would," a friend replied when I tweeted after dinner about how much I'd loved Brasserie Chavot, "it's very you." And it's true; Eric Chavot's new, eponymous brasserie on Conduit Street is very me, encapsulating pretty much everything I love in a restaurant in one very polished package.

Take the stunner of a room, a long, high-ceilinged space formerly (and briefly) The Gallery at The Westbury, the Mayfair hotel that the restaurant is part of but discrete from. Flatteringly-lit by twinkling chandeliers above a glorious mosaic floor, with a small, chic bar at the front and seafood counter looking onto the kitchen at the back, it's just the kind of room I like, and can't imagine anyone not liking, to eat in; elegant but informal, welcoming and warm.

The menu's right up my street too, the kind that at first glance looks a little 'so what?' because nothing leaps out, until it dawns on you that that's because you'd happily order all of it. There are no alarms and no surprises here, just all your brasserie staples - oysters, parfait, steak tartare - with a couple of modish interlopers like soft-shell crab and ceviche to keep things current.

A party of three - myself and two very elegant femmes d'un certain âge of my acquaintance Lyn and Vicki - we started off with a dozen oysters to share. Advertised as rocks, some appeared to be fines de claires, which I minded a little. If it seems ungrateful of me not to appreciate receiving ostensibly superior oysters to those ordered, let me say in mitigation that I have always preferred the full-on snog-with-tongues of rocks to the refined peck-on-the-cheek of fines de claires, while accepting that there is a time and a place for both. That aside, they were completely delicious and very attractively served, with accompaniments of shallot vinegar in a china oyster shell and crepinette, little patties of peppery veal sausage for crumbling on top. Great value too, at under £2 a piece.

I was a little ambivalent about my starter proper of steak tartare; something of a Tartar when it comes to tartare I was curious to see what 'mustard dressing' might bring to it. The answer was a piquancy - of course - and creaminess that while perfectly pleasant didn't particularly improve on a classic. There was exceptional flavour to the beef mind you (rump from Aubrey Allen, the chef told me later) and it was generous in quantum for £9.50 - Vicki's main course serving at £15 even moreso - although neither size came with anything, no toast, or fries, or salad, which I thought odd.

Lyn's ceviche was unimpeachable, translucent slices of scallops in a beautifully balanced marinade of lime juice and chilli, and we all enjoyed the basket of sourdough bread with its moreish bitter, dark crust. Her main of tiger prawns with chickpeas and chorizo was a hit too, the large prawns split in half and given a smoky char from the Josper grill.

Although I'll admit to having suffered slightly from plate envy, it was quickly dispelled by my own main course of choucroute garnie. Served in a cast-iron casserole dish it was more garnie than choucroute, and none the worse for that, a mini-mountain of pork - belly, back bacon, sausage, shoulder, oh my - concealing a tangle of glossy sauerkraut with a couple of potatoes and carrots thrown in for good measure. In his wonderfully obsessive 1989 essay 'True Choucroute', reproduced in The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten calls choucroute garnie 'a dizzying, almost inconceivable gastronomic summit'; I think he'd approve of this rendition.

Only I had room for dessert, a not unusual state of affairs, and my Mont Blanc was a soothingly light end to a rich, comforting meal. Like the steak tartare, this was Eric Chavot's take on a classic rather than a textbook version of it; I liked the replacement of pureed chestnuts with chestnut parfait and the addition of black-cherry sauce, but purists might not. You'd have to be dead inside not to love the presentation though, in a beautiful heavy-based glass bowl.

With a carafe of Rioja for the ladies, a Virgin Mary for me and service, our bill would have come to about £50 a head, had it not transpired when we asked for it that it had completely unexpectedly 'been taken care of'. I couldn't quite work out exactly why, or by whom, but whoever it was I'm very grateful to them. We'd had a really delightful time and that very pleasant surprise was just the icing on the cake.

Brasserie Chavot is not perfect; there is definitely room for tweaking. Service for example was friendly and unhurried, but a used aperitif glass stood empty on the table until late in the meal, and one main course came a little after the others (which was apologised for, but serving everyone at the same time is fairly basic stuff). These might seem petty quibbles, but like a spot of red wine on a brilliant white tablecloth, little things stand out when everything else is so accomplished.

But as my friend had known I would, I liked Brasserie Chavot; I liked it a hell of a lot. I don't see how anyone could fail to. It's a lovely room to eat in, the food's fantastic, it's very good value for money and it helps that the chef is a real character. Go, be seduced, have fun, then tweet about how much you liked it so I can say, "I knew you would."

Brasserie Chavot, 41 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YF Tel: 020 7078 9577 www.brasseriechavot.com







Posted by +Hugh Wright

Hawksmoor Air Street

I love steak. If in the final hours prior to my expiring I retain any capacity to choose and masticate then I am certain to include a great big slab of beef, bleu, in my last meal. But I very rarely order it in restaurants, or go to steakhouses, because of what is known in my family as The Pam Principle™. 

My mother, Pam, never orders in a restaurant anything which she might reasonably expect to make at home, believing that it's wasteful to pay someone to do something you can do yourself. I have an excellent local butcher (Moen & Son of Clapham, if you're interested) and a heavy griddle pan, and as such I cook steak - really, really good steak - exactly how I like it, often and well.

As a result, the crop of high-end steakhouses that have exploded onto the London restaurant scene over the last few years have largely passed me by; sure I've heard of the big players - Goodman and Hawksmoor being the Titans of the genre - and had good times at steak specialists 34 and CUT at 45 Park Lane, but as a general rule I've abided by The Pam Principle and enjoyed my sirloin strictly chez moi for no more than about a tenner a time, including service (of course I tip myself - doesn't everyone?) 

Something piqued my interest however about Hawksmoor Air Street, the latest and largest opening from partners Will Beckett and Huw Gott. It's the first of their restaurants to focus on fish as well as flesh, bringing in esteemed seafood specialist Mitch Tonks to curate the crustacea; 2012 has very much been the year of restaurants doing only one thing, well so I was curious to see if Hawksmoor could pull off doing two. 

The answer (for the impatient among you who like to skip to the last page of a book first) is yes, although the main courses dinner date David and I tried were actually the least exciting part of an overall extremely good meal. Char-grilling lent my 'Hawksmoor Cut' turbot - a thick lateral tranche served on the bone - a wonderful subtle smokiness, but the same savour was a little overwhelming on David's slightly-too-chewy 600g bone-in sirloin. Both were good, but only as good as you'd expect at Hawksmoor's prices.

What we really enjoyed were the supporting elements, the accompanying bits and pieces that distinguish Hawksmoor Air Street from its competitors. Cocktails - from a list divided up by suitability to the time of day, and a real joy to read - were ace, from a perfect dry Martini to an after-dinner Buttered Old-Fashioned using bourbon stirred patiently with clarified butter to produce a rich post-prandial soother. Wines were chosen for us from the reasonable-enough selection on offer by the glass, the house Grenache proving particularly fine for £6.

A pre-starters dish of seasonal pickles - which on our visit included mushrooms, carrot and cauliflower as well as an egg, but changes - was sensational, each ingredient pickled in different vinegars and spices creating complex layers of flavour. Sides were unusually good, too; Jansson's Temptation, a Swedish potato gratin with anchovies, worked well with both the steak and the turbot, as did a light, fresh dish of spinach tossed with lemon and garlic in which every component could be discerned. Starters were one hit, one miss; David's roast scallops were terrific, three fat succulent specimens served on the shell with white port and garlic, but my potted beef and bacon with Yorkshires suffered from the puddings being slightly toasted and bitter.

We went a bit salt caramel crazy for dessert; a peanut butter shortbread with salt caramel ice-cream was astonishing (although surely anything which combines peanut butter and salt caramel has got to be A Good Thing), as were three salt caramel 'Rolos', larger than Nestlé's finest and easily ten times as tasty although I'll be interested to see how long the Swiss confectioner's IP lawyers let Hawksmoor keep calling them that for.

Interior detail of Hawksmoor Air Street
by Niamh Shields eatlikeagirl.com

The room  - a 235-seater first-floor behemoth overlooking Regent Street - is attractive, decorated in clubby dark wood, parquet and green leather with some beautiful stained glass and salvaged Art Deco light fittings, but too huge properly to appreciate. It's also very loud; perhaps unsurprisingly the vast majority of tables were taken by all-male groups bellowing at each other over their bone-in prime rib.

Service was good if at times a little disjointed, but it jarred that in these grand surroundings the clothing worn by the staff was mostly the type of jeans-and-check-shirt combo that even local boozers would consider too casual. I found an interview with Will Beckett in which he explains that staff are allowed to wear their own clothes as it makes them happier and therefore able to deliver better service. Well sorry Will, but if I'm handing over forty quid for a bit of turbot I think I'd rather it be served by someone in a nice starched apron, thanks.

Hawksmoor Air Street is a glamorous place serving some pretty good, and at times very good food (I'd go back for a cocktail or two and those pickles alone) but didn't wow this diner enough to question the validity of The Pam Principle. Fortunately for its owners however, not everyone's mother knows best.

Hawksmoor Air Street, 5A Air Street, London W1J 0AD Tel: 020 7406 3980 thehawksmoor.com/airstreet

I was a guest of Hawksmoor Air Street on this occasion




 


Posted by +Hugh Wright

Disiac, Soho

New restaurants open in London at such a whirlwind rate that, if it's not your actual job to do so, it's almost impossible to keep up. I subscribe - as should you, if you have any interest in these things - to Catherine and Gavin Hanly's definitive Hot Dinners e-newsletter, and keep an eye on, among others, the excellent blog of lifestyle concierge company Bon Vivant, but very often even reasonably high-profile openings pass me by.

All this having been said, I was still surprised when a friend who has nothing to do with restaurants professionally or otherwise raved to me about Soho newcomer Disiac, because not only had I not heard about it, apparently no-one else had either - not the newsletters, nor in my 'Food People' column on Twitter, nor even a couple of real-life restaurant critics I asked.

You will, I think, be hearing rather a lot more about Disiac before long however, because having gone along to try it for myself I reckon it's going to be very popular indeed. For one thing it's an absolutely gorgeous little place, with a minimal but luxurious monochrome interior and a variety of flexible dining spaces - see-and-be-seen window seats, tucked-away booths or around the central raw bar and open kitchen. For another, the bar turns out some extremely good - and potent - cocktails at £9 a pop from opening o'clock until gone midnight.

But the real excitement at Disiac lies in the fantastic food, some of the best I've had anywhere in a while. Executive chef Paolo Palmisano and head chef Michele de Rosa (ex-Cecconi's) have put together a mostly Italian menu, divided simply into Starters, Fish & Meat and Pasta & Risotti, all made to order.

My date - rising star of fashion illustration Joe Larkowsky - and I started with some ace bruschetta followed by a beautifully oozing Pugliese burrata, simply drizzled in some very good Spanish olive oil. That same oil, with the addition of just a little lemon and parsley, was used to sauté fat mussels, the resulting rich emulsion coating the bivalves like butter.

A plateau de fruit de mer was for its £32 price - all-in, not per person - absolutely huge and especially generous considering it included half a grilled lobster and a few Colchester rock oysters alongside super-fresh, super-tasty mussels, clams and langoustines, pleasingly chewy chilli-flecked razor clams and sweet, bright Mediterranean prawns. We finished off with two incredible pasta dishes, strozzapretti - thick hand-rolled whorls - tossed with courgettes, cherry tomatoes, bitter wilted radicchio and tangy dolcelatte, and the classic Neapolitan scialatelli alle vongole, short cables of pasta dotted with dinky palourde clams.

The forty-five bin wine-list is strong on champagne and sparklers - accounting for a third of the list - and elsewhere offers an interesting selection of all-Old World whites, reds and rosés, none marked up by more than about 100% on the retail price meaning there are some bargains to be had. A crisp, green Tramin Pinot Bianco was a good match both for the salinity of our seafood and the bigger flavours of the pasta.

So great food, fair pricing, cracking cocktails and a smart space; what's not to love? Nothing that I can see, although Disiac will face some challenges to really establish itself and do as well as I hope it will. Firstly, the slick interior is so the opposite of the current ubiquitous bare brick/exposed lightbulbs fashion that trendier restaurant collectors might unfairly give it a wide berth. 

Also the changing roster of events - a DJ some nights, live jazz others - could put off punters who prefer consistency over variety. Not me, though; I intend to go back, and often, to enjoy more of the brilliance Joe and I experienced on this first night, and suggest that you do too. 

Disiac, ladies and gentlemen - unusually, you heard it here first.

Disiac, 6 Greek Street, London W1D 4ED Tel: 020 7734 3888 disiaclondon.com







Posted by +Hugh Wright

Scott's, Mayfair

When a couple of weeks ago my super-posh gal pal Alexandra purred "Let me take you for dinner at Scott's" it was, I can safely say, the most exciting invitation I'd received since 1995, when a particularly stellar pop star I'd met at a party asked me back to his hotel room. I accepted both offers, and each resulted in my having a fabulous tale to tell, but this blog being about restaurants I'm afraid the only episode you'll be hearing about here is the fancy fish supper.

Scott's usually needs no introduction, but just in case you've been asleep under a rock (or perhaps a rock star) since 2006, it is the jewel in Caprice Holdings' crown, widely regarded as one of London's best restaurants and certainly its most famous - even more so these days than its slightly-faded sister The Ivy. A Mayfair institution throughout the twentieth century, Scott's fell out of fashion and favour at the turn of the millennium until being bought five years ago by Richard Caring, given a sensitive but stunning Martin Brudnizki makeover and transforming, seemingly overnight, into the capital's A-List hangout of choice.

Write off Scott's as a mere celeb canteen though at your peril, for behind the landmark round window and canopied entrance there's a beautiful, brilliant and welcoming restaurant catering to a far more diverse clientele than the paparazzi-populated press would have you believe.

Bistro du Vin, Clerkenwell

May 2012 - This restaurant and its sister site in Soho have now closed - they are to become mega-branches of the estimable Burger & Lobster

Asked in a recent interview what makes the perfect restaurant, an eminent and well-loved food writer observed that while good food obviously matters, it's not everything, and that the room, service and atmosphere are just as important. "Very, very few places get the mix exactly right", he sagely added. Although not getting it quite exactly right - yet - Bistro du Vin, the first standalone restaurant from the popular Hotel du Vin chain, is certainly an example of a restaurant that's heading the right way.

On the site of what was once Bjorn van der Horst's hubristic Eastside Inn, Bistro du Vin is the latest big-bucks opening in an area which already boasts, within a few minutes' stroll of each other, culinary genre-definers Bistrot Bruno Loubet, The Modern Pantry, Hix Oyster & Chop House and the daddy of them all, St John. Rather than trying to introduce something modern and fashionable to this already modern and fashionable mix, Bistro du Vin instead offers staunchly traditional bistro grub in stylishly classic surroundings, lubricated by an exciting selection of wines, many by the glass. It does, reassuringly and well, exactly what it says on the tin.

J. Sheekey

J. Sheekey, the fish and seafood specialist hidden just off St Martin's Lane, is the equally successful but never-quite-as-famous sibling of Scott's in Mayfair; Maggie Gyllenhaal to Scott's' Jake. It's also one of my absolutely favourite restaurants of all time, ever. 

From my first visit about eight years ago with my then boyfriend to last night's brief but wonderful visit with my gorgeous friend Caroline, it's never disappointed, and while the prices might occasionally cause a sharp intake of breath - I'm still in therapy from the time I blithely said to mum 'Now don't worry about the prices, you just order what you like' only for her to 'like' half a lobster and the roasted mixed shellfish -  there are some comparative bargains to be had.

During July and August, if you eat pre-theatre as Caroline and I did - Sheekey's is perfectly located for it - their superlative fish and chips and a glass of house wine can be had for just £15.75, about the same as at Brown's just across the courtyard except at Brown's there isn't a top-hatted doorman to greet you. From the a la carte menu, the justifiably famous fish pie is a very reasonable £13.50 and is pleasingly biased towards the piscine side of the filling/topping axis. At weekends, there's a set lunch menu offering three courses for a very fair £25.50.

What I'd really recommend however is that you save Sheekey's for those special occasions - anniversaries, birthdays, BAFTA wins - when you or whoever's paying feel inclined to blow the budget and you can indulge yourself in the full array of sparklingly fresh oysters, perfect crustacea and finest fish caught that day, along with a bottle or two from the excellent and not-too-terrfiyingly-priced wine list. 

As well as superb food you'll enjoy superlative service, handsome decor and, if star spotting's your thing, no doubt a glimpse of a theatrical dame or motion picture knight or two. Booking's a bugger but worth persevering at; if you can't stand the struggle the more informal Oyster Bar next door doesn't require (but accepts) reservations and keeps some seats free for walk-ins.

The smart wood panelling, contemporary art and black and white photos of stage and screen stars through the ages make Sheekey's a very grown-up place (although children are welcome I've never seen any) and if there's anything to criticise about it - and I really do struggle to think of anything - it's that the atmosphere might at times feel a little too hushed and the general ambience a little too formal for some tastes. While there's always a sense of celebration in the air here, as a venue it's neither suited to nor intended for boisterous parties or casual dining; it's a serious place serving serious food, and photography - of others or of one's meal - would be as welcome as a bone in the filleted Dover sole.

Other restaurants might be more fun, or creative, or accessible than J. Sheekey, but very few indeed are actually better. I hope that you'll try it, and that when you do you'll love it as much as Maggie loves Jake.

J. Sheekey, 28-32 St. Martin's Court, London WC2N 4AL Tel: 020 7240 2565 http://www.j-sheekey.co.uk 

Randall & Aubin, Soho

In her remarkable self-help book ‘Dare To Be You’, psychologist Dr Cecilia d’Felice sets out an easy, accessible eight-step approach to reducing stress, living well and achieving lasting happiness best summed up as common sense backed up by professional eminence and personal experience. The book recommends that we nurture good friendships, lay off artificial stimulants (whether legal or illegal – Dr d’Felice is no moraliser) although a little booze is allowed, and follow an ‘Emotional Well-being Diet’ which separates foods into mood lifters or lowerers and encourages abundance of the former and avoidance of the latter. Combine all three -  great friends, moderate liquor and some uplifting food – and you have a sure-fire recipe for happiness on your hands.

That certainly proved to be the case last week when I enjoyed a fantastic dinner at Randall & Aubin in Soho with two very dear friends of mine, none other than the aforementioned Dr Cecilia d’Felice and her teacher fiancé Dick. Although my friendship with them is one I have taken care to nurture, my long-standing acquaintance with Randall & Aubin is one that I have egregiously neglected of late so I was delighted when Cecilia and Dick suggested it for dinner one evening after we’d been a for a couple of cocktails (non-alcoholic in the case of Cecilia who practises what she teaches).

Randall & Aubin occupies the largely unchanged premises of a turn-of-the-twentieth century butcher’s shop, and were it not for the abundant displays of crustacea and neon ‘Fruits de mer’ signs in the windows it would be easy to walk past without realising that this is a restaurant. Those that do venture inside however are rewarded with a beautiful interior of black and white tiles, globe lamps, camp-as-tits chandeliers and a scattering of mirrorballs; as one might deduce from this and from the restaurant’s heart-of-Soho location, R&A is very popular with a gay clientele. Messrs Randall and Aubin may have stocked the primest meat in their day but it’s as nothing compared to the bodies on some of the boys who line up of an evening to bagsy a prime window seat.

Seating is on high stools at marble counters running around the perimeter of and criss-crossing the room. No bookings are taken but the wait if any is usually short and in any case flies by given the calibre of the people watching. The all-day and -night menu offers a good selection of steaks, grills and rotisserie (chickens roast tantalizingly on spits in the open kitchen) but the real focus here is firmly on all things aquatic. Whether you like your fish grilled, fried, steamed or roasted, or your crustacea piled high on shaved ice or dressed and added to a salad, you’ll find something to keep you happy at Randall & Aubin.

To kick off, Cecilia and Dick shared a plate of Randall’s crab cakes with lime mayonnaise and I, remembering how much I’d enjoyed it on my all-too-long-ago last visit, chose the prawn and shrimp cocktail. Both were excellent, unfussy interpretations of classic dishes; to my greedy eyes the portion of three quite small crab cakes appeared a little meagre but there were no complaints from across the table. The cocktail, served in a cocktail glass, ably demonstrated the harmony of the friendship between plump sweet shrimps and zingy Marie Rose sauce.

Main courses also brought smiles to our faces. Dick tucked into a rib-eye steak of such a size as to account for both the weekly portions of red meat allowed on the Emotional Well-being Diet and served with chips and truffle-dressed watercress. The bloodily rare chunk Dick offered me to taste was very much to my liking although Dick felt it could have been more tender (something Dr d’Felice would like us all to be towards ourselves). My salad of Devon crab with avocado, shrimp and pimento dressing was luxurious but light, the addition of just a touch of chilli to copious white and brown crab meat giving the whole an enlivening kick. Cecilia, elegant as ever, ordered pan fried king scallops with braised fennel, a happy marriage of the scallops’ bland sweetness with the delicate aniseed notes of the slow-cooked vegetable.

To drink we had a bottle of a very pleasant 2008 Marlborough Riesling, one of only a few New World wines on a mostly European list all at accessible if perhaps slightly over marked-up prices. I wish I could tell you more about it but I was far too distracted singing the praises of ‘Dare To Be You’ to my neighbours at the table (these things happen with communal seating) to take better notice of the wine. Nor can I tell you much about the bill, as this was one of those rare but delightful occasions where I was kindly treated. I would hazard a guess at about £35 a head to include a £1.50 per person cover charge and 12.5% service, more if you were to fancy trying one of the spectacular if expensive sea food platters. Service throughout, provided by a team as handsome as any of the aesthetically-enhanced customers, was friendly, fast and at times edifyingly flirty.

Despite this being my nth visit it was only on spotting a framed press clipping in the loo that I learned that Randall & Aubin is co-owned and run by TV chef Ed Baines, but don’t let that put you off for this is no celeb cook vanity project. This is a well-designed, meticulously thought out, expertly-run enterprise serving unpretentious but elegant food at sensible prices in an egalitarian atmosphere. And that, like having friends as wonderful as Dick & Cecilia to enjoy it with, makes me for one very happy indeed.

Randall & Aubin, 16 Brewer Street, London W1F 0SQ Tel: 020 7287 4447 (No reservations) http://www.randallandaubin.com

The Lobster Pot

The Lobster Pot in Kennington is lauded as a local institution and even before finally making my first visit last Saturday, I had heard and read a great deal about the quirky boat-themed interior, amusing sounds-of-the-sea soundtrack (long before Heston came up with the notion, it was being done here) and the supposedly very high quality of the seafood on offer served with pride by chef-patron Herve Regent. All were present and correct, it really is a charmingly eccentric set-up (ambience snobs would hate it; those of us with a sense of humour will embrace it as part of the experience) and attentive if occasionally remote staff add to the feeling of being in a place into a which a lot of thought has gone.

What detracts from the experience, however, is the shockingly high prices for what is, to be kind, no more than a local, casual dining room. I know, having grown up by the sea and been brought up on seafood fresh from the morning's boats, that fish and shellfish of the quality served here doesn't come cheap, but come ON, Monsieur Regent: why no starters under £8.50 or mains – grilled chicken in this case – under £16.50? Sure these prices don't shock in the West End, or in local fine-diners such as Chez Bruce or Trinity, but this is Kennington, not Kensington, and for the bill to come to just over £100 for two courses for two and one bottle of wine is outrageous.

What did we eat to rack up such a whopping bill? We started with the large seafood platter for two at £25.50, adding half a lobster for an additional £12.50, and it certainly was large, groaning with half a crab, five oysters, clams, winkles, whelks, a huge langoustine and rather too many shrimps both pink and brown. The half a lobster was more like 3/8 of a lobster, lacking its claw which I thought cheeky, and was fine but unremarkable though in fairness I've always thought lobster over-rated. All of it was very good and undoubtedly super-fresh, and certainly justified the price tag, but I felt that it was the only starter on the menu which did.

Mains were OK, but my bouillabaisse at £18.50, served in a shallow fish-shaped dish rather than the deep vat I've come to expect, bore the scars of having stood under a heat-lamp for rather too long, probably while we were finishing the seafood platter. For one of the house's supposed specialities, it wasn't particularly...special. My partner Alyn's grilled tiger prawns – a whacking £19.50! – similarly looked (and tasted) as if they had been grilled for about five minutes too long. A couple of the ten or so prawns tasted ‘not quite right’ (his words) but he couldn't put his finger on it enough to make a complaint worthwhile.

The promised accompaniment of ‘a selection of vegetables’ constituted one new potato, one floret of broccoli (a broccolo?) and a quenelle of something orange; carrot and swede mash perhaps. This smacked of a chef attempting to finesse presentation in a restaurant where presentation is secondary – in a good way – to the experience, and therefore jarred. Bizarrely there are no side-orders on the menu, so one has to take this measly selection or lump it. It was all so uniformly average-to-good that we just didn't have the enthusiasm to bother with desserts.

The wine list is, like Nicolas Sarkozy, short and entirely French, with all the usual suspects from Muscadet to Beaujolais via Rose d'Anjou. Our Muscadet, not too dear at £18.50, was nice enough but not one of the best, lacking the floral oomph that typifies better examples of this safe seafood pairing.

To give The Lobster Pot its due, the prices and no-more-than-quite-good standard of the food don't seem to have deterred anyone; the place was absolutely packed from 8.30 onwards and in addition to several other couples and a downcast family party, a large table of regulars (we deduced this from the effusive welcome they received and the entire staff's dedication to their table before ours) were enthusiastically and noisily shovelling down a mountain of seafood and bottle after bottle of Veuve Clicquot at £72.50 a pop – what credit crunch?.

The place appears to do perfectly well from a devoted local clientele without needing to go the extra mile to attract and retain casual visitors. I won't be going back; if I want superior food at prices to make my eyes water, I'll stick with my all-time favourite J.Sheekey where the final bill is at least mitigated by the five-star quality of the whole experience.

The Lobster Pot, 3 Kennington Lane, London SE11 4RG Tel: 020 7583 5556 www.lobsterpotrestaurant.co.uk