Phoning to book at Fleur, I am told I can only be accommodated at 12.15 or 2.15, because 'most tables are used twice over lunch'. To my mind, lunch is called lunch because it's after breakfast and before tea, so I say never mind, I'll go elsewhere. There's some hasty backpedalling, and at 1pm I am sliding on to a leather banquette in a restaurant at which maybe five other tables are occupied, while wondering how much more sepulchral things would have been 45 minutes ago.
Fleur is the newest Marcus Wareing restaurant. Confusingly, it occupies the same site as his much-admired Petrus, which in turn has just displaced La Tante Claire at the Berkeley Hotel. My companion Amanda, who'd eaten at Petrus, is puzzled that Wareing hasn't called the decorators in: same muted gold wallpaper and doomy paintings of cheeseboards. The waitresses' outfits are as unflattering as they were in the old days, she says, but, despite this, everyone is smiley and attentive in a way that occasionally verges on the sociopathic.
At our table, we are interrupted three times in as many minutes by staff brandishing the wine list. We feel cheap three times over, waving it away - but neither of us can face wine. It is, you see, a dazzlingly hot day, and we've already been seduced by the sight of the champagne trolley.
The menu is a bit heavy for the time of year: Aberdeen Angus fillet, potato confit, braised carrots. But my starter of crab and salmon ravioli with pink grapefruit, pak choi and basil purée was a big ker-ching, down to the final sparkle of lemongrass, despite the fact that the salmon had overpowered the crab and the basil had got lost in the mêlée. Seabass on fennel was equally good - damp and crisp in the right places. Amanda, who'd found the food at Petrus spookily denatured, was happy with the unfrilly treatment of her sautéed sweetbreads but felt they, like the pan-fried skate that followed, were oversalted. Strawberry fool with meringue, and chocolate millefeuilles were presented in identical fashion - disc, cream, disc, cream, disc - which looked like a failure of imagination, even if they didn't taste like one.
Remembering the shock and awe inspired by Petrus, it's almost disappointing to report that there is nothing at Fleur to scare the horses; no, not even the bill, which seemed, in the context of St James's, almost reasonable. But that glass of pink champagne, the only item chosen without checking the price, cost the same as my seabass. Cheeky. Just as well we refused the wine list.
· Fleur, 33 St James's Street, London SW1 (020 7930 4272). Lunch for two, including two glasses of champagne, £100.
