B&H Garden Room, London: ‘Sins against good taste' – restaurant review

The London skyline dazzles at this rooftop restaurant, but from there the only way is down

The B&H Garden Room, Assembly Hotel, 31 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0LS (020 3962 7275). Starters £9-£12, mains £14-£32.50, desserts £8-£12, wines from £27

The moment I’d paid the bill at the Bourne & Hollingsworth Garden Room atop the Assembly Hotel, I took the lift down 10 floors and lolloped up London’s Charing Cross Road in a blind, pigeon-toed fury. I went to the Ivy Club, the shiny members’ space above the theatreland restaurant of which it is a part. Yes, I’m a member. So shoot me. They mix a killer whiskey sour, there’s an impressive live jazz scene and they have a no-photography rule that means I can get drunk and slip off a bar stool like treacle spilling from its tin, and no one will have pictorial evidence.

Normally, I stick to a mantra: never eat in a restaurant with a view because it won’t be about the food