Earlyish on a hot, busy Thursday night in Soho we hit this spot with some confusion (where's the entrance? Not through the hotel, not the staff door – ah, next one…there's the desk, where's the front-of-house person? Aha! The rather frazzled girl in the floral dress, being run ragged).

The buzz was brill, the table right by wide- open windows at the front: a rather small but perfectly placed table with the temperature so high (see said table on the restaurant image gallery). The staff were cheerful and friendly, and coped well with the frenetic level of activity. Properly cold champagne, fab-sounding menu – so good, so far…

I had the herb-roasted salmon on toast with crushed broad beans to start. It looked so pretty, little nuggets of golden-crusted salmon, a bright green smear of colour on a rustic slice of country-style toast, the plate artfully decorated with pea shoots but it tasted of…next to nothing. The salmon was underseasoned, the toast underdone & very soggy and the crushed broad beans were effectively pureed to an unidentifiable mush, again underseasoned. Boringly bland.

My friend had the spinach & pennard ridge (a goats cheese) tart. It was ‘a slice of quiche’ as she declared, surprised. She was expecting an individual tart, which was not the kitchen's fault, but it was served cold as in not-long-out-the-fridge cold rather than room temperature, which was the kitchen's fault. It tasted disappointingly bland, she said. I had a go: nice pastry, nice texture and nicely-seasoned; the flavour was delicate and much improved in the heat of the restaurant, eventually. My friend had by then got bored of it.

The boys won hands down with their starter choice: wood pigeon, black pudding & scotch quail egg salad. The wood pigeon breast was well-cooked (as in correct ie rareish), the black pudding was crunchily cooked and terrifically tasty but the deep-fried dinky scotch eggs with warm, runny yolks were fantastic: I want them as a bar snack, all by themselves – please… More