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'I'm devastated to report that I don't hate the cooking'
Noise. So much noise. Plonked in the middle of a long, communal table, the only way I can hear a word the pal is saying is by stretching over until our foreheads almost touch, bosoms leaning on the place settings like a latterday Les Dawson housewife's.
Bosoms on the table is not an issue that's concerning most of our fellow diners, since they're not blessed with them. This loud, clattery dining room is in the heart of the City, and you don't need me to tell you how predominantly male that dominion is. All around us, chaps in suits are eating pies. (Not what I'd call a pie, mind you – it's pastry only on top, which is cheating.) They bellow at each other and compare mobile technology. It's fair to say this is not my kind of place.
I dislike all of it: the hard-edged, plate glass-windowed room with its leather sofas and butch colour scheme in a blocky, ugly building. I dislike the knowing, jaunty flat cap on the smiley doorman, and the winsome graphic frocks on the gorgeous staff. And I dislike the huge menu, bristling with ideas filched, sorry, borrowed from other, more pioneering outfits – they've done their homework, I'll give them that, in the likes of Hix, Hawksmoor and Terence Conran's Albion. (This is a D&D production, the first hotel from the people who bought out the Conran empire. Design is by a little outfit called Conran Associates. Wheels within wheels.) But it's all a bit dumbed-down and sanitised. And I want to chew off my own fist at its arch little devices, all "more eat and meet than sleep" soundbites and pop art groceries. If Garfunkel's can reference HP and Marmite, it's time for the smart money to move on.
So I'm devastated to report that I don't hate the cooking. Sure, it's nothing too elevated: little more than comfort food done with a sensitive touch and good ingredients – just the sort of unchallenging stuff a busy, well-off chap likes to eat. Unconsciously, we gravitate towards the girlier items, leaving out the pork pies, bone marrow and pig's trotter. So it's a take on an old bistro favourite: salad of Beenleigh Blue, a British cheese made from ewe's milk that isn't quite roquefort but gives it a darn good stab, with walnuts, dandelion and wild watercress, a well-dressed marriage of richness, bitterness and crunch. Lobster "mac" is translated as long tubes of pasta (a good impersonation of hand-rolled pasta al ceppo) with hollandaise and generous chunks of lobster.
There's a "Kashmiri" lamb curry, ordered in the schadenfreude-tinged belief it would deliver something sub-Vesta. Alas, no, it's excellent: melting, slow-cooked meat spiked with fresh-tasting spices and served with good rice, a chunky, tangy mango chutney and cucumber raita, all in pretty beaten copper bowls. It's also huge. An airy crème brûlée, just scented with elderflower, rounds off a depressingly fine meal.
Fortunately, the burger lets the side down: too precious, too neat and tidy, its meat a little shy and retiring, with none of the wrist-soaking juices that today's dirrrty burger fetishists require. Fingers of Welsh rarebit are equally well-behaved, with a touch of the cardboard about both look and flavour. I can get properly irate about the staff's habit of sloshing enthusiastically marked-up wine – our 500ml carafe of grüner veltiner costs £27.50 – up to the top of the glass. When I remonstrate, our beautiful waitress smiles pityingly: "I thought that was the way you English people liked it."
The designers have done their best with unpromising raw material: quirky modern/vintage furniture and lots of art popping up all over the shop (they've even inaugurated the South Place Hotel Art Prize by way of rustling up a bit of personality). We're told that the adjoining foyer bar offers "a happening scene in which to enjoy skilfully made cocktails by savvy bartenders, who later take to the decks". Oi, Piers, make mine a Bolly and blackcurrant, and hold my coat while I open a vein. But I'll have one of those excellent pork pies on my way out.
• 3 South Place, South Place Hotel, London EC2. Open all week, noon-10.30pm. Meal for two with drinks and service, about £100.
Food 6/10
Atmosphere 4/10
Value for money 5/10