Telephone: 020-8960 5757

Address: 4 Conlan Street, London W10

Rating: 15.5/20

It's a long time since I have seen hessian used as a wall covering, but there it was in Cafe Arabica, a nice shade of sandy brown. It was odd, but no odder than the wrought-iron rafters and beams, industrial-unit pitched roof, B&Q wooden flooring, chipboard tables, Arne Jacobson chairs and the ululation of the Middle Eastern hit parade. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen it was not, and after weeks of relentless good taste and designer niceties, such ramshackle energy was curiously pleasing. Cafe Arabica was not somewhere with a £1m budget, carefully considered marketing strategy and identikit menu. But it did have a very capable team in the kitchen.

The quality of Middle Eastern food in this country has risen pretty steeply over the past few years. Al Waha, Noura and Biblos, to name but three, have drawn back the curtain on some of the delights of Lebanese kitchens, in particular. But I had never come across anything quite like the food served here.

There were a lot of the old favourites, variations on those dishes that seem to run from the shores of the Mediterranean to the slopes of the Hindu Kush - moutabel, fattoush, tabouleh, baba ganoush, kibbeh and falafel. Then there were the less familiar, at least to me, warab enab, shanklish, magdous, and simsim sardines. And then there were the just plain odd: Arabian taramasalata, made with smoked mackerel; chargrilled baby squid with juniper berries, honey and fresh green chillies; and Saudi prawns. Oddest of all, there were 15 cold mezze, 12 hot mezze, but only one main course, magloubeh khudra bi ek bharat (or, as the menu helpfully translated, "Egyptian rice slowly steamed with vegetables infused with a blend of spices topped with toasted almonds and pine nuts complemented by tahini salad"), and no puddings at all that I could make out, which I looked on as an endearing eccentricity.

Tempted though Tina and I were to trundle our way through the whole menu, in the end we settled for moutabel (aubergine purée), warab enab (vine leaves stuffed with pine nuts and sultanas), shanklish (a salad of cheese, tomatoes, onions and fresh mint), magdous (pickled aubergine stuffed with garlic, walnuts and parsley), mouhammara (grilled red peppers, chillies, sultanas and walnuts in olive oil), fattoush (a salad of crisp bread, tomatoes, cucumber, wild thyme and roasted simsim); Jordanian fool (broad bean purée); kofta al majnoon (grilled minced lamb); simsim sardines (deep-fried sardines in a crust of sesame seeds and breadcrumbs); and Damascene falafel (chickpea patties). That may seem rather a lot - in fact, it was rather a lot - but we finished it all with no trouble. My only regret was that I didn't have room to try a number of other mezze, and the single main course in particular.

The dishes had many of the virtues that I associate with Middle Eastern cooking. The flavours were clear and sprightly. They had a summery shimmer. There were happy contrasts between dishes - gloopy moutabel v crunchy falafel; sharp magdous v cheesy shanklish; herby fattoush v meaty kofta, and so on.

But there was another element that I had never come across before in Middle Eastern cooking: chilli. Of course, it crops up in harissa in the form of pimenton, and maybe once or twice elsewhere, but never with such cheery abandon. Here it was in the simsim sardines, marinated in green chillies, garlic and fresh herbs; in the dipping sauce for the falafel; and in the fattoush. It wasn't aggressive or searing, but handled with tact and diplomacy, adding another facet to each dish.

In fact, there was a notable dash about the spicing in general, and a brio about the way traditional ingredients cropped up in untraditional places. It was as if the kitchen was putting down a marker that it wasn't going to be confined by the constraints of regionality and tradition. This turned out to be the case, because Cafe Arabica has two chef/proprietors, Jad al Younis from Jordan and James Waters from east London. Fed up with the lack of imagination, as they see it, of Middle Eastern food in London, they decided to develop their own more eclectic style of cooking, cheerfully borrowing from hither and yon to come up with a kind of pan-Arabian fusion food.

But the real question is: do the results justify the free-and-easy approach? I have to say that I think that they do. With the exception of a dried and dreary warab enab, our dishes were vivid and pleasurable, particularly the simsim sardines, kofta al majnoon, fattoush and magdous. Any transgressions of "authenticity" will bother only the most particular student of Middle Eastern cookery. The rest of us will, I suspect, say something along the lines of, "Oooo, that was jolly good/ tasty/tiptop/wicked," or whatever.

Oh, I almost forgot. The bill came to £52 - not a lot for a load of food and a bottle of wine. Cafe Arabica is a tricky place to find, lost in the maze of north Notting Hill. Look on it as an expedition to a rather individual oasis in the desert, and you won't go far wrong.

· Open Tue-Sat, 5-11pm. No credit cards.