Telephone: 00 33 1 45 51 47 33
Address: 84 rue Varenne, Paris 7e
Rating: 15/20

Monsieur Alain Passard, chef and proprietor of Arp¿ge, refined three- star gaff in Paris, recently garnered a lot of column inches in this country, and even more in France, by declaring that his menu was going vegetarian. He could no longer rely, he said, on the quality and provenance of meat products, and so out they would go from his kitchen. It is easy to understand such sentiments in Britain, ravaged by foot and mouth, BSE, E coli and the rest, but in France ..?

Anyway, a quick glance at the menu as I waited for Delphine suggested that M. Passard's conversion to the vegetarian cause had been slightly exaggerated. There were loads of vegetables, sure - leeks, red onions, potatoes and asparagus all had starring roles - but so, too, did sea urchins, scallops, lobsters, soles and pigeons. In fact, had I or Delphine been lured there by the exotic promise of three-star vegetarian menus, we would have been disappointed, because both the fixed-price lunch time menu (at Ffr690, or around £67) and the Menu D¿gustation (at Ffr1,400. Yes, that's right, Ffr1,400), had fish dishes on them. In fact, the big menu had at least three dishes - sea urchins, lobster and ravioli of leek with a fennel consomm¿ heavily pepped up with langoustine stock - that would not have found favour in certain quarters I know .

None of this would have mattered much to either Delphine or myself had the individual dishes been more interesting. No, I'll be fair. Out of eight dishes, three were outstanding: the ravioli of leek with the fennel/langoustine consomm¿ was compelling - pure, delicate and penetrating. There was an exquisite crisp tart of a blue cheese, Forme d'Ambert, with thin slices of winter pear laid on top - simple, clever, direct. And a version of gauffrette, a kind of waffle, of such ethereal lightness it was astonishing that it remained anchored to the plate.

But what of the rest of our dishes? At best, they were disappointing, at worst misconceived. What do you make of roasted lobster with red onions that, although cooked, still retain a savage degree of unrepentant rawness. It didn't help that the lobster had all the tenderness of a piece of Manila rope, but the onion was like a drunken yob shouting in church.

There was another dish of trumpeted vegetables splashed with a sauce of argon oil, this year's Gucci ingredient (ie, expensive and exotic), which, apparently, is made in Morocco from the stones of the fruit of the argon tree that have passed through the digestive tract of a goat. On this showing I am not sure that argon oil is going to be tomorrow's balsamic vinegar. Its subtle virtues did little to liven up a rather dull heap of mostly root veg, which, for some incomprehensible reason, had been liberally sprinkled with couscous.

It was as light as a thistledown, and about as exciting to eat. I could go on enumerating the shortcomings of dishes that weren't so much bad as just plain dull.

All in all, M. Passard is going to have to work a great deal harder at the vegetable alchemy to convince me, or Delphine for that matter, that leguminous lunching is any substitute for carnivorous consumption. His staff will have to work a sight harder, too. When you are paying Ffr1,400 for lunch, I think even I deserve better than unconsidered, sloppy, incompetence. I waited five minutes after I had sat down before someone asked whether or not I wanted a drink, another five minutes before I got a menu, although I was on my own at that point. Dishes were plonked down in front of us with little ceremony, the formal explanations cutting across our cheerful conversation. And, in spite of several attempts to encourage the front of house team to bring the bill, they continued in an irritating, languorous fashion. And when I tell you that said bill was Ffr3,000, including a bottle of not-too-bad burgundy at Ffr680 and two glasses of champagne, I expect to hear a sharp intake of breath (particularly from my expenses controller).

You may think that I have been generous in my marking, but a restaurant with three stars should rate 19, or thereabouts, out of 20. I could not have been happier to while away a lunch with Delphine. I just wish it had been somewhere with rather more charm and rather tastier food.

· Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, 7-11pm. Menus: Lunch, FFr690 for six courses; Menu D¿gustation, FFr1,400 for 10 courses. All major credit cards.