It never fails. We've eaten at the Union Cafe four or five times over as many years: it is a wonderful, relaxed, pleasant place to spend an evening. It could easily bear a first date, or a meeting of friends, or a work dinner which won't be dreary, and that's a hard spectrum to serve well. Ideal for a West End rendezvous (half way between Baker St and Bond St tubes), closeted on a corner of crooked, pleasing Marylebone Lane, opposite the tiny untouched Golden Eagle pub. You foregather for a pint, and look around at the nearby restaurants, like Entrecote or the Golden Hind or Caffe Caldesi, and then you ponder the Lebanese and Persian and Chinese pleasures within a few minutes walk … and somehow you are dragged back to the Union Cafe. A clean, uncluttered dining room, with good elbow room around the modern wooden tables. The counter and kitchen sit in an L-shape at one end of the room, but do not dominate. The room is on a street-corner, and so benefits from windows along its length and then breadth, giving a run of very pleasant tables for two at one side of the room. A wine list which is perhaps unparalleled in London for value: Cloudy Bay for £25, Cune Imperial Gran Reserva 1998 (what a wine!) for £33.50, Domaines Ott rose at around £30: these are first-class wines which would normally sit in the forties and fifites, if they were offered. The Fiefs de Lagrange 2000 (St Julien) is a very serious second-wine claret from a wonderful year: for a very special occasion £50 is actually a true bargain. At the other end of the spectrum, the low and mid-teens-priced wines are very good: someone really cares about this list. Its consistency and sheer smarts are enough to take you to Marylebone on their own. But if you are so lured, then the food will also reward. Modern European/British with a couple of Asian dashes among the starters, and some North African tinges in the main dishes. It is pretty simple, and it's well-cooked. It's not wow-special, it's not haute cuisine: it's just… More