Claude Bosi at Bibendum, South Kensington

For what promised to be quite an occasion of a dinner, it's fair to say our evening at Claude Bosi at Bibendum did not get off to a great start. Arriving a few minutes before our allocated 6:30 booking (look, I like to eat early, OK?) the doorman seemed entirely unprepared for the possibility that not every guest will arrive precisely bang-on time, and ordered us into a holding-pen of an empty bar, where we sat cold and ignored as members of the downstairs staff tidied up around us until it was time to try our luck again with Mr Cheery in reception. Perhaps this is just as much Bibendum's fault as the doorman - they really need to work out where to put people who are a bit early, even just a chair in reception or being offered a glass of water or something - but even so, it hardly put us in the mood to enjoy ourselves.

Once upstairs though, safely past the bowler-hatted bouncer, the atmosphere was a lot more convivial. Firstly, and most obviously, it's an absolutely beautiful room, undoubtedly one of London's finest, and sat amongst the deep-blue stained glass windows and plush carpets even the eating of a cheese sandwich would feel like an occasion. Secondly, front of house are, each and every one of them, superb, and headed up by a guy (who's name I forget, sorry) who apparently worked for Sir Terence Conran in the same space when Bibendum first opened in the 1980s. Now that's some pedigree.

We started with cashews with malt vinegar powder. It's a sign of the amount of effort that goes into everything here that a clever cheffy technique was used on something as simple as nuts to go with your aperitif. These were obviously ridiculously addictive and I polished them off in about 30 seconds.

Next, a little bonzai olive tree with a couple of spoons of what looked at first like normal black olives. Of course, they weren't - they were very delicate frozen shells of olive juice, perhaps more impressive than delicious, but impressive nonetheless. I believe the original idea was to have them hanging off the branches of the tree itself, like a similar amuse at Catalonian gastro-temple El Cellar de Can Roca, except in early trials customers attempted to pluck the "olives" off the tree a bit enthusiastically and ended up covering themselves in black olive goo.

Then a little bowl of chicken skins and a sort of miso dip. Can't remember much about these, to be honest, but I can't imagine we left any.

These were gougère, beautifully warm and fluffy, and suitably easy to demolish. I've never met a gougère I didn't like, so they're either fairly easy to get right or only the very best operations even attempt them in the first place. I'm guessing the latter.

Miniature foie gras ice cream cones were next, expertly constructed little things, pretty as you like and dissolving in the mouth with plenty of good meaty flavour.

Next, curried pea and egg, which looked the part and no doubt took quite a lot of doing (there were multiple layers inside, of fudgy yolk, pea purée and fresh whole peas), but in which the addition of coconut rendered the whole thing a bit, well, offputting. For all I know, there is, somewhere out there, some combination of egg, coconut and fresh peas that won't make me wish I hadn't eaten it, but I'm afraid this wasn't it. Still, full marks for experimentation.

Fortunately, bread was on hand to make up for the coconut pea thing, and not just any bread - sourdough supplied by Hedone in Chiswick. It's become the Done Thing to automatically call this the best bread in London, and indeed at one time it may have been - however the competition is such now that I'm pretty sure I know a few other bakeries that could give them a run for their money. It's still great bread though, and the nice soft butter it came with was superb as well (and even better with a bit of salt on top from one of their weighty silver Bibendum cellars).

It's worth noting that at this point, we still had not been served the first of the 7 courses from the tasting menu. Whatever you think about the merits or otherwise of spending £200 on dinner, there's clearly a lot of work at Bibendum gone into providing extra bits and pieces, amuses and nibbles, and the pacing and style of service had been immaculate. I can think of a few restaurants - and one other in South Kensington in particular - where you could spend at least this and have nothing even so much as a chocolate truffle in addition to the three menu dishes you've ordered. Not so here.

So first course proper, then, was crab with elderflower jelly and sea herbs. This was, I don't mind admitting, the first time I've ever eaten crab and elderflower together, and also (not coincidentally) the first time I've eaten crab elderflower jelly. So perhaps my not being completely bowled over with it is partially the shock of the new. It got better as you dug down and the brown meat mixture at the bottom of the bowl became more prominent, but I still struggled to get past the strange floral/seafood combination. Interesting, but perhaps not an experience I'd want to repeat.

Hibiscus had a good line in asparagus dishes, and so it is here in South Kensington, with this thick meaty spear (sorry, I don't know what came over me), with a strip of confit orange peel and what's described on my menu here as "smoked hay hollandaise" but actually tasted more like a kind of thick hazelnut butter. Very nice, anyway, and I also appreciated the Claude Bosi signature knife that came with it.

It was a nice surprise on sampling this scallops with strawberry "sauce vierge" to discover that the scallops were warmed slightly; there's something about fridge-cold scallop that sets my teeth on edge, and yet in most places that's just what you get. It was also nice to discover that the herby, only faintly strawberry-led sauce that covered them was herby and complex; an attractive, and rewarding bit of seafood.

The next course was an absolute cracker - a beautiful bit of sea bream, geometrically exact with razor-sharp edges, sat on a rich morel and tarragon dressing. The fish itself, with its delicate crisp skin and firm flesh, could not be faulted, and the morel sauce was a classical and comfortable combination of flavours and textures. It's dishes like this that make rather a stronger case for tradition than outright experimentation...

Veal sweetbread, beautifully prepared with a thick, dark glaze of black garlic, was another crowdpleaser. Nothing too strange going on here, just a good slab of offal, cooked perfectly, and a pretty selection of mayonnaisey sauces to accompany it.

Then more veal - Limousin I believe, with a bit of pressed cucumber and a nice rich stock-y sauce. I'm always going to be more of a fan of protein that's been thrown on top of charcoal than teased into uniform pinkness in a waterbath, but it was still a very decent bit of baby cow, not earth-shatteringly interesting but very easy to eat.

And finally, a pea and chocolate cake, which sounds on paper like it might be the most disruptively experimentational dish of all and yet - in the face, it has to be said, of my own personal prejudices (I have a long, unhappy history with vegetables in desserts) - it turned out to be completely brilliant. The pea flavour wasn't jarringly savoury at all, it was just a faint sweet vegetal note, and the sugar levels were expertly judged as to make complete sense of it all. If I only had to eat one vegetable-as-dessert for the rest of my life, then it would have to be this one (though it's true there isn't a great deal of competition on that front).

It would have been easier in writing this post to either be able to make some blithe pronouncement to the effect that when Bibendum stuck to classical techniques and traditional flavour combinations then the dishes were more successful, or alternatively that when they had the courage of their convictions and tried something new the results were impressive. In fact, neither of these extremes are true. In end end, some of the experimentation, such as the pea and chocolate tart, was extraordinarily successful and something approaching an instant classic, while others such as the crab and elderflower, fell flat. And similarly, while the sea bream and morel dish used a tried-and-tested flavour profile to great effect, a rather humdrum bit of sous-vided veal didn't do much for me.

So it's hard to know what to say that's going to be any use really, other than it was all a bit uneven - some bits were great, other bits weren't so great, and it was all rather expensive. Actually, that sounds dismissive - it was, as I said previously, thanks to the huge number of extra bits and pieces, not cynically priced - but I don't want to end up having to use the word "uneven" on any dinner costing upwards of £200 a head, no matter how much fun I had at the time. And if someone came to me with £200 burning a hole in their pocket and asked where they should be spending it, I'm not sure Bibendum in its current form would feature very highly up the list.

But there it is, that's what a meal at Bibendum currently looks like and perhaps in the not so distant future I'll have reason to revisit and it will have really found its feet and become one of London's truly great restaurants. Until then, you're probably more likely to see me at the Ledbury or the Clove Club next time I feel like a bit of haute cuisine; it's hardly Bibendum's fault the competition in London is so fierce at the moment. But how lucky we are that it is.

7/10

Elystan Street, South Kensington

Phil Howard has a lot to answer for. It was in his previous restaurant The Square, at some point in the summer of 2003, that I sat down with a friend and enjoyed a meal that utterly changed the way I thought about the business of eating out. I'd had good meals up to that point, true, though mainly on holiday in France and in that Bib Gourmandparent-friendly French regional style, but this was something else - cooking of stunning precision, exotic ingredients teased into geometric forms, service and surroundings of otherworldly luxury. Here, amongst the soft furnishings and modern art of a restaurant in Mayfair, eating Devon crab lasagne with basil cappucino, was when I realised just how good food could be.

So he's to be thanked, or blamed (depending on your point of view) for the fact you're reading this food blog 13 years later and, directly and indirectly, for a legion of chefs, restaurants and food fanatics that have crossed the doors of that Mayfair institution during Howard's tenure. He was - is - a giant of the industry, a "chef's chef" (to use the rather tired phrase) who never missed a shift in his kitchen, was a mentor to countless numbers of young hopefuls, and held onto two Michelin stars longer than most enjoy entire careers.

But times change and with the Square losing a star*[see comments] and some of its elitist luster we end up at at Elystan Street, where like so many Michelin-starred chefs of his generation, Howard's attempting to "go informal", with looser, more rustic presentations, more relaxed service, and - needless to say - no tablecloths.

And first impressions are good. It's a lovely bright room, clean lines and attractive woodwork, tables and chairs are inviting and comfortable, and house bread is really lovely, a delicate thin crust containing a soft, bouncy crumb. With a glass of house champagne to hand we were more than willing to look past the punchy prices on the dinner menu and enjoy the possibilities of dishes such as "Ravoli of langoustines with barbecue dressing" or "Mousseline of grouse with pearl barley". If this is the brave new direction of Elystan Street, then I'm all in favour.

Starters were, across the board (well, across the three our party ordered), very enjoyable indeed. My own sweetbreads were cooked perfectly, and soaked in one of those brilliant sticky sauces that these haute cuisine kitchens always do so well. "Truffled autumn slaw" didn't have much of a hint of truffle but was rich and smooth and full of interesting textures (including a few sprigs of crunchy deep-fried kale on top) and I loved every bit of it.

Shellfish bisque with potted shrimps on toast was another crowdpleaser, a supremely light and fresh bisque matched with a neat oblong of pressed shrimp and went down very well. And I didn't get to try the salad of roasted vegetables but judging from the noises being made there were no complaints there either, all the more impressive considering this was a vegan dish presumably constructed with its local audience in mind.

So, so far so very, very good. With the starters down we were all relaxed and happy, a bunch of people who had travelled across town and risked quite a bit of money on a brand new restaurant (albeit one with a prestigious pedigree) and were more than pleased with the way things were going. And then.

Then, somehow, Elystan Street seemed to conspire only to disappoint. The grouse itself in my main course had been cooked incredibly well (as you would expect) but had very little of that funky, aged flavour I look for in the best of these birds and the sauce it was dressed in, a thin affair of elderberries and little else, had none of the depth of meaty flavour needed to compliment game. Criticising anything as nebulous as a "lack of depth" in sauces runs the risk of looking like nit-picking, but you go to places like this (at least, I do) for that incredible way with reduced stock sauces you can't get in your usual high street joint. They had nailed the sweetbread sauce completely - why not the grouse?

"Butternut squash", said my friend as she picked through her main, "doesn't go with fish". Unfortunately for her, it had taken her £35 to find this out, and despite a very well cooked bit of john dory and an interesting black rice accompaniment, there just wasn't enough here to enjoy.

And parmesan gnocchi with mushroom purée had the same problem with lack of firepower - not enough flavour in the mushroom, not enough parmesan in the gnocchi, hardly a hint of the advertised truffle. "It's just a bit... boring" was the eventual response. £30 worth of boring.

Yes, the prices. Had the main courses gone better - a lot better - we may have been able to at least accept, if not overlook, the frightening numbers attached to everything at Elystan Street. But as events played out we began to see the lack of bells & whistles - no amuse bouche, no pre-dessert, not so much as a chocolate with the bill - as being rather mean-spirited in the context of an only intermittently enjoyable meal costing £100 a head.

Perhaps on another day, in another place, in another price bracket, I would have been able to enjoy this objectively very decent lemon tart a bit more. Perhaps I only imagined it was ever-so-slightly too sharp because I knew it was £12 and because of what came before. But in any circumstances I would not have enjoyed the accompaniment of a very, er, "goaty" goat's cheese ice cream, which was dungy and distressing next to the clean flavours of the tart. Weird.

I'll avoid piling criticism on criticism and ignore the occasional annoying service niggle (it's early days) and instead praise the excellent no-nonsense sommelier who helped us pick a very decent Italian Pinot, one of the cheapest on the list at £35, which matched well with most of what we ate. But in my experience it's when you even start to notice service niggles that's a sure as indicator as any that the experience has not gone well. We left £100 lighter a person and vaguely aware we'd have been better off at a huge number of other restaurants in town. Which is a shame, for all involved.

Maybe all of the issues at Elystan Street are a result of a classically French-trained chef attempting Modern British Rustic and being caught between a rock and a hard place. It's ironic the last time I ate a 2* chef's food attempting to go "no tablecloths" it was Tom Aikens, in this very building, and that fell similarly short. Perhaps there's just no shame in being haute cuisine if haute cuisine is what you're good at and haute cuisine is what people want. But anyway, I will just go back to reminiscing about Devon crab lasagne and basil cappucino and that restaurant in Mayfair, all those years ago, that changed everything.

6/10

Wright Brothers, South Kensington

There's something incredibly attractive, even glamorous, about the Oyster Bar. The idea of being able to rock up (excuse the pun) somewhere, order a plate of fresh oysters, maybe a glass or two of wine (or stout, if you're that way inclined), enjoy these things in an informal setting and be on your way without the subsequent commitment of a three course meal, or (again, if you're lucky) a wallet-busting bill, makes you wonder why there isn't one on every street corner. Surely everyone, barring those of delicate constitutions or the hopelessly seafood-averse, loves oyster bars?

The problem, in this country at least, is historical. Until fairly recently you just did not see decent fresh seafood - oysters, but also crabs, lobster, prawns, langoustine and a whole host of other delicacies - on the menu anywhere outside of the poshest of posh (and French) restaurants, invariably in London. Fish served in UK restaurants, if it wasn't smoked (kippers, cod, mackerel), was frozen - your average high street dining spot simply didn't have the motivation or desire to serve fresh fish, nor the turnover or the expertise to handle it even if they did. The vast majority of the wonderful stuff found swimming around UK shores was loaded straight into vans and packed off to France and Spain, who could boast the demand, and the restaurants.

Part of the story of how this sorry situation was turned around with such dramatic effect was written by people like Rick Stein, one of the first to realise the madness of ignoring the produce on our doorstep and to do something about it in his Seafood Restaurant in Padstow in the 1970s. But each generation makes its own leaps forward, and that Londoners can enjoy fresh oysters, shucked and presented properly, in so many venues in town is largely thanks to the Wright Brothers, who turned their oyster import business into a stall in Borough Market in 2005, and in doing so became the latest in a long line of food heroes (I'm sure Rick Stein would approve of the term) to contribute to London being one of - ok, the - greatest food city on earth.

It will come as no surprise, then, that the seafood served at Wright Brothers South Kensington is immaculate. Cherry-picking my two favourite elements of any fruit de mer - oysters and langoustine - I constructed myself a stripped-back and starkly beautiful tray of seafood heaven; four plump, perky beauties from the North Atlantic, sweet and soft and the finest I've tasted all year (and that includes some fairly notable places), and half a dozen Jersey rocks, minerally and lean with an almost native-like metallic tang. As far as I'm concerned, this is the engame of seafood platters - you can keep your lobster tails, shrimps, whelks (horrid things), mussels and clams; if I could order nothing but langoustine and oysters from a seafood menu for the rest of my days, I'd die a happy man.

Nothing Wright Brothers could do from that seafood onwards could ruin my evening, which was just as well because their fish soup was a bit on the underwhelming side. All the elements were in place, rouille and grated Gruyere on the side, a good dark brown colour and thick consistency to the broth, but it all added up to an oddly muted flavour overall, hinting at something stronger and more powerful but not quite managing it. With a lot of added salt and pepper it was better, but still not great. Strange how even the best places find fish soup quite a challenge.

Roast crab was much more like it though. Hacked apart and dressed in a sticky chilli, coriander and ginger sauce, it had the irresistable one-two punch of vast amounts of plump brown crab and an Asian-influenced sauce which brought to mind Rick Stein's famous Singapore Chilli Crab dish but was somehow more mature and complex. There aren't many dishes that improve on the simple joy of a boiled crab with chips and aioli; this was certainly a contender.

Speaking of which, chips were also great - golden brown and greaseless, with a lovely lemon-tinged aioli neither too stiff or too garlicky, light and incredibly moreish.

Seafood - proper fresh seafood, sourced with care and prepared with skill - will never and should never be "cheap". Sure, you can probably shave a few quid off these numbers if you shop around a bit, but Wright Brothers is many people's go-to oyster bar because they consistently serve a wide range of the very finest shellfish in the country, and they charge exactly the proper amount for it. And they do so in genuinely lovely spaces (the Soho branch is particularly stunning) via staff who know exactly what they're doing. There's not much, in short, they're getting wrong. Now if they could only work on that fish soup...

8/10

Wright Brothers stands a good chance of being in the next version of the app. Meantime, see where else is good in South Kensington.

Bibendum, South Kensington

I sometimes get the feeling that the more the pace of restaurant openings in London quickens, the more of a creature of habit I am in deciding where to eat out. This is, for a food blogger, clearly a bit of a worry - I generally don't re-review places (and certainly not anywhere whose score hasn't changed), and as last month proved, it only takes a couple of unfortunate illness/power cut events combined with a dearth of new experiences elsewhere to make these pages look, well, a bit sparse. So although the gravitational pull of Bob Bob Ricard, The Dairy, Tayyabs, MeatLiquor and the other Top 100 (pluggy plug plug) are stronger than ever, there's still not much of an excuse, in a city as dynamic as this, to not at least make a bit of an effort to try somewhere new.

So this month I'm redoubling my efforts to get out there and visit some places that have been on The List (yes, I do have a list, it's on the Notes app on my iPhone but it's still a list) for way longer than they should have been. The only question was, where? And given the frightening number of options, how on earth do you decide? Then I remembered Uncover, a restaurant booking app I'd been asked to test out a couple of weeks previously. The idea (I think) is that it will keep a database of high-end or oversubscribed restaurants with last minute availability, so that if you want lunch or dinner somewhere nice that very day, it will throw up a list of options.

It's early days (the app is still in soft launch mode) but it's already quite a fun way of booking a meal. Searching from my house in Battersea (it's vaguely based on location) it offered lunch tables last Saturday at Medlar, Hawksmoor Knightsbridge and our eventual choice Bibendum, each of which I would have happily patronised. Admittedly it also suggested The Admiral Codrington (which has gone dreadfully downhill since burger maestro Fred Smith left) and Ametsa with Arzak Instruction which hasn't exactly set the world alight but I guess it was never likely to be exactly tuned to current critical consensus.

Anyway after a couple of prods at my iPhone screen and a bus ride, we were in South Kensington, settling into the plush dining room of what is surely one of the more beautiful dining spaces in London. Michelin House is an Art Nouveau masterpiece, stunning outside and in with its handpainted tiling, floor mosaics and stained glass windows depicting the proto Michelin Man in a variety of energetic activities - riding a bike, kickboxing(?), everything apart from driving a car weirdly. Perhaps it made more sense in 1911. Anyway, downstairs is the newly refurbished Oyster Bar in the cavernous (and rather chilly) main hall, and very popular it looked too, but we were booked in upstairs, an altogether more genteel (and warmer) environment.

The menu is a real crowdpleaser, priced as you might expect in these parts (£31 for 3 courses) but with thankfully just enough interesting sounding dishes scattered amongst the usual mid-high-end clichés (chicken liver parfait, haddock and chips with tartare sauce, you know the drill). House bread was from Sally Clarke and was a gorgeous baguette still warm from the oven. And look who provided the butter, M. Bibendum himself in what was once presumably an ashtray. I wonder how many of those go missing week by week.

Fennel soup was comforting and had a good light texture even if it was slightly underseasoned, but came with a couple of crunchy slices of anchovy toast which were incredibly moreish. If you've ever tried that Gentleman's Relish stuff you see in posh delis, try and imagine that only runnier and even more powerfully salty - I couldn't get enough of it.

The other starter was this generous fillet of brill, firm and relatively flavoursome in a creamy sauce that was again perhaps slightly underpowered but still enjoyable. Sometimes, a bowl of fresh white fish in a seafood sauce, served by smiling staff in a beautiful dining room, doesn't have to be anything much more than solid to make it all worthwhile.

Of the mains, cod with Swiss chard fritters and sauce "choron" (a Béarnaise with tomato added, apparently) was the more successful; in fact was very good indeed. The fish was absolutely stunningly white and split apart into moist flakes with only the most gentle of persuasion. The fritters added crunch, and wrapping up the fillet itself in more chard made it a bit like opening a Christmas present. Very festive.

My own duck breast wasn't much worse. Unfortunately, though, despite perfectly medium rare slices of nice moist bird, and with seasonal sprouts, pancetta and juniper as a very decent accompaniment, the whole thing was spoiled slightly by an incredibly powerful bitter orange sauce, which just seemed a bit clumsy. I did finish it though, so it can't have been that bad, and on the side was a little layered potato fondant thing, full of flavour and crunch, which I would have happily eaten again and again.

At the risk of sounding like a pastry pedant, doesn't the word millefeuille suggest at least two layers of ingredient? A couple of blobs of dark & white chocolate fondant inside layers of biscuit is only a millefuille if a bungalow is a duplex. Anyway, flavours were decent, and the boozy soaked cherries added a nice extra element.

Everyone knows what to expect from Christmas pudding, and this was a perfectly good example. The egg nog ice cream was nice, rich and vanilla-y, a clever extension of the brandy sauce underneath, but this was never likely to win any awards for Innovation In Dessert Design. It was a Christmas pudding.

So yes, there were bits that were less than perfect. But it's strange how it's only now as I impassively review the photos that I remember the errors here and there, whereas at the time it was all just so much... fun. Certainly that had something to do with the service, which never missed a beat, and the house prosecco which slipped down very easily, not to mention the booking process which didn't involve anything so annoying as having to talk to a human. But when you want a lunch experience to run like clockwork, and you don't mind throwing some money at it to make it happen (a bill of £130 for two is punchy perhaps, though not entirely unreasonable), this is when places like Bibendum, this grand old dame of Fulham Road, come into their own.

7/10

Uncover paid for this meal, or at least most of it (I went slightly over budget like I usually do). Here's a link if you want to try it yourself. Photos taken with a Canon 700D with 50mm lens, kindly loaned from Canon.