Telephone: 020-7253 9000
Address 69-73 St John Street, London EC1
Rating: 16.5/20

I've had lunch with some picky types in my time, but Blossom fair takes the biscuit. "What's this?" "What's that?" "How do you think they've done this?" "Don't you think...?"

Don't I think? Well, no, actually, I don't. Not much, anyway. No more than I have to. Eating is about pleasure; or it should be. Ordering, sizing up the dining room, eating, drinking and talking; talking most of all. I never go to a restaurant to worship. Worshipping may come along in due course, but it is not the point of going to a restaurant in the first place. I may get round to thinking deeply about the food, analyse it and work out what was going on - or wasn't going on, for that matter - but only in due course. Sitting down to eat with someone should be a matter of natter, chatter, debate and discussion, laughter and light.

We were nattering, chattering, debating and discussing in the Clerkenwell Dining Room & Bar, a pretty new operation on which once stood an outpost of Stephen Bull's empire before the good man sold up and offed to Herefordshire. There is still something of Bull about the Clerkenwell Dining Room, but the new owner and chef, Andrew Thompson, has smartly divided up the space with screening walls, which makes the room seem larger than it really is. The starkness - or, shall we say, uncluttered austerity - of the Bull era has been further softened by artworks, both paintings and vases, of rather elegant good taste.

So, down to the food. The menu rubric has about it a certain plain beauty - pan-fried tuna salad, pickled vegetables; grilled halibut, potage of mussels and mushrooms; braised short ribs, horseradish and wild mushrooms; roast corn-fed chicken, creamed cabbage, crushed potatoes - characteristic of the souped-up brasserie, and, as is sometimes the case, the brevity of the description disguised the burnished sophistication of the finished article.

You might think that crispy calf's foot, black pudding and pea purée is a down-to-earth dish for the northern sensualist. When it put in an appearance, however, the calf's foot had been rendered as a flat round disc, like a puck, of finely chopped matter that you get from a foot (mostly gelatine and fine shreds of sweet meat) with a seam of black pudding through the middle. The outside was coated with crunchy breadcrumbs. The peas were a witty take on mushy peas, reduced to a fine, sweetish purée, on which the puck sat, the cushion of purée encircled by a necklace of fine veal stock. So there you have it: a pretty refined bit of rustic cookery, and a fair indication of the kitchen's style.

Before that, I had a salad of octopus with seaweed in a mirin dressing, which was a bit of Japan meets the Med in which the Med came out on top. The overall effect was quite robust, with a sensationally tender roasted octopus, a beautiful green salad in which the seaweed was not alone and a finely restrained dressing. Blossom went for the fried tuna salad with pickled vegetables, which was all right, but not in the same class.

He was even pickier about the braised short ribs. The ribs, he said, were fine; an unusual treatment for this cut, but one that they took in their stride. No, it was the juices that... well, he wasn't exactly complaining that they didn't quite have the ooomph that he thought they should, but commenting on the fact. I'm not sure that he was right, particularly as he scoffed the lot - except for the mash, which, he rightly pointed out, was only just this side of gluey (ie, over processed). On the other hand, it might have been down to the supernatural amount of butter churned into it.

I had no complaints about choucroute paysanne with winter vegetables. The chou was good, acidity well under control. The meats - chicken, beef, sausage - were well cooked, but not stewed or dried out. It was simple enough, and satisfying enough.

We finished with an apple tart, which Blossom, true to form, dismissed as rather too sweet for his taste almost as rapidly as he dismissed the dish itself. I had raspberry and nougatine baked Alaska, because I had to (when was the last time you saw baked Alaska on a menu?), and was pleased by my quixotic compulsion.

Braised ribs, choucroute, baked Alaska - these aren't dishes that you see every day on menus in Britain. In fact, you're jolly lucky if you see them at all. That, in itself, marks out the Clerkenwell Dining Room & Bar with a good deal of individuality, and a good deal of skill to go with it.

The bill was £57 for food, and rather more on drink, our sense of restraint rather undone by the simple pleasure of conversation and a magnificent merlot from South Africa, De Trafford, at £29.50, which Blossom had marked out as an old friend. Thank heavens there was something of which he approved unreservedly.

· Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 6-11.30pm (Sat from 7pm). Menus: Lunch and 6-7pm, £11.50 for two courses, £14.50 for three. All major credit cards.