I am in a time machine cleverly disguised as a posh, west London restaurant. It's as if the past 20 years never happened, but this Tardis adventure is no thrill of a lifetime. The New Angel named for its owner John Burton-Race's ill-fated venture in Dartmouth (there's a lot of stuff out there about infidelities, ex-wives and bankruptcy, but it's all too tawdry) is, as we say in Scotland, boring the bahookie off me.
It's very brown all shades of chocolate and beige; the sort of thing Kelly Hoppen might reject as too vanilla. Tables are very close together. I'm trying hard, but nope, I can't remember anything else about the decor, other than it looks dated, and not in a vintage way. The moment you sit down, along comes that totem of 90s upselling, the no-prices-announced champagne trolley. As for the menu, that's a psalm to overwrought, bourgeois French tradition: little fried salt-cod amuses with green slicks; a beautiful monkfish tail comes bathed in a lurid yellow sauce, the kind of thing billed as "au curry" in provincial French bistros; desserts come in trios; and petits fours of fine macaroons and salted caramel truffles.
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