Telephone 020-7010 8600.
Address 13-15 West Street, London WC2.
Rating: 17.5/20

Once upon a time, East@West was known as plain West Street. Sadly, West Street did not flourish in the way that its owners had hoped, in spite of a warmish (15.5/20) review from me. And so West Street has changed gear, design, concept and chef (but not owners) and become a rather different kind of crumpet. Out has gone the cool, android chic, and in have come warmer tones and lighting that is kinder to the more fully-figured eater. Gone, too, is the ground-floor eatery - that space is now given over to a fine bar where you can get rather sophisticated snacks, too. The dining room upstairs remains, but it is now a calm, soothing space.

However, most notably, gone too is the Italian-pastiche grub, decent though it was, and in has come Christine Manfield, all the way from Australia with, as far as London is concerned, a pretty original approach to what is unquestionably fusion cooking. Regular readers will know about my feelings on fusion food. I am never quite sure what it means. All cooking is, to some extent, a fusion of ideas, techniques and ingredients. It just depends where the accent falls. In Manfield's case it falls markedly on the Orient, although whether specifically on China, Japan, Vietnam or Thailand is difficult (for me, at any rate) to say. Europe gets a look-in (yellowfin tuna tartare; salmon confit; slow-braised lamb) and there's also a peek at the Americas (avocado; chilli jam), but, in terms of the style, spicing, structure, sweet/sour axis and overall zing factor, it has the unmistakable tone of the eastern approaches.

For example, the yellowfin tuna is seasoned with ponzu, ginger, wasabi and no doubt loads of other dainties that give it an unusual roundness of flavour, and matched to nori omelette, avocado and flying fish roe mixed with wasabi. Spiced turmeric broth is more sour than sweet thanks to lemongrass and tamarind, so it has an immensely focused, clean tang to it, and one in which the additions of spring onion wontons and garlic chives strike clear, individual notes. Duck's breast is smoked - which helps cut the richness of the meat, from which most of the fat has been rendered - and then paired with longan, a lychee-like fruit with a similar exotic perfume, asparagus and rocket.

And so on and so on. It is tempting to let the roll call of flavours romp around the memory and to fill up the review with them. However, fun though it would be for me, it will not answer the question of whether these dishes are any good.

Manfield's cooking seems to spark off severely divergent opinions. There are those who think it pretty whizz-bang and there are those who, frankly, think it bloody awful. I am firmly in the whizz-bang camp. Not only do I find the dishes themselves brilliant - brilliant, that is, in terms of colour, contrast, definition, complexity and balance; brilliant, too, as in vivid - but that the contrast between them also sets up a kind of rhythm between the sets of flavours. The sharp, pointy notes of pickled fennel and mint with the salmon confit, for example, neatly set up the gentler, more ruminative flavours of the tea-smoked duck breast dish and the slow-braised lamb with white truffle noodles, chanterelles and green peppercorns.

It helps that none of the dishes is that big or rich, nor is the menu structured along conventional lines. Of the eight dishes on offer at £7 each at lunch, Tucker and I did for seven of them, and still had room for passion fruit ice cream with lychee and mango sorbet slice (which was a kind of hugely superior Mivvi), and spiced quince and ginger syrup cake with green ginger custard - the sort of pudding about which I dreamed all through my school days.

Sometimes, I find a sequence of Lilliputian dishes wearisome. Either you're just getting to like one dish when it's all gone, or another is so boring that you forget what it is before you've finished it. In the case of East@West, Manfield has got the portions just about right, in part because the range of flavours and textures in each dish keeps your tastebuds limbering up even after you've stopped eating, and in part because, assuming you choose sensibly, there are such distinctive contrasts between the dishes.

Seven pounds a course for sexy, sophisticated cooking looks pretty much like a snip, but it's funny how, once you get stuck in, the bill mounts up. Ours mounted to £86.50 with very little help from the liquid side of things - £27.50, to be exact, taking into account just two glasses of wine, Campari soda, coffee and water. Is that too much for wafting in sunlight and exotic excitement on a dank winter's day? I think not.

· Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-3pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 5.30pm-12 midnight. Menus Wicked Dinner, £35 for five courses or £40 for six; Divine, £35 for five courses or £40 for 6; Delicious £32 for five courses, £37 for six. All major credit cards. Wheelchair access & WC