Telephone: 020-7657 8088
Address: Threadneedles Hotel, 5 Threadneedle Street, London EC2
Rating: 17/20

I am not sure which is more remarkable: the scale on which the City nabobs once sought to celebrate their magnificence in vaulting banking hall and pillared corridor, scrolled plaster and marbled flooring; or that there seems to be more money made from the mausoleums of commerce by turning them into restaurants and hotels.

Threadneedles is a new hotel, Bonds is the restaurant in it. The conversion of the old Midland Bank into the new incarnation has not been as happily devised as at Harvey Nichols Prism, up the road in Leadenhall Street, or at QC in Holborn. The place feels like an "up-market canteen", as Debeers put it.

But we weren't there for the decor. We were there to lunch on Tom Ilic's cooking, the hallmark of which has always been a serious approach to flavour, with an unusual sensitivity towards textures. And the menu at Bonds promised to continue this philosophy, what with roast crépinette of skate with artichoke ragout and juniper butter, braised pig's cheeks and chorizo with garlic and parsley mash, or roast monkfish tail with snail bourguignonne and salsa verde.

Debeers and I mixed and matched from the set lunch menu and the à la carte. She had butter-poached lobster with cauliflower and truffle panna cotta, and then baked teal in pastry with soubise sauce and thyme jus; I had sautéed lamb sweetbreads and frogs' legs with shredded carrot and cardamom, followed by assiette of pork with pickled cabbage and rosemary. Then Debeers had pear tarte Tatin, while I had a semolina pudding with ginger ice cream.

The high point was the butter-poached lobster. It was fabulously sweet and tender, the panna cotta a textbook example of extreme delicacy. The teal, too, was a fine, if complex, way to treat this tiny, tasty bird. The pastry was top-notch, the soubise sauce a most satisfying lubricant. My pudding, too, was a beauty - the semolina was a molehill, fluffy and dry, ready to absorb the rich beauty of the ice cream, sharpened by a slice of baked apple on the side.

Lower down the slopes were the lamb sweetbreads with the frogs' legs, the pork assiette and the pear tart. The tart was let down by a pastry base of spoon-defying impenetrability. The pork dish was just a bit dull. And the salad sounded more interesting than it turned out.

This may sound harsh, but Ilic is a serious chef and should be judged by the highest standards. And when you are paying £130 for lunch, your critical faculties tend to be sharper. In fact, the bill came to £135.66 in all, with drinks totalling £50.75. Furthermore, the service was ineffectual, if sweet - longueurs of delivery of drink, failure to remember who was having which dish, confusion over coats, etc - the kind of things the City fathers of yore would never have tolerated.

· Open Mon-Fri, 12 noon-2.30pm; 6.30-10.30pm. Menu: Lunch, £23.50 for two courses. Wheelchair access and WC.