Maze, 10-13 Grosvenor Square, London W1 (020 7107 0000). Full meal for two, including wine and service, £100

There are lots of reasons why I could have hated Maze, the latest restaurant from Gordon Ramsay's organisation. It occupies a space in a hotel - the Marriott on London's Grosvenor Square - and cannot help but feel a little corporate and Corby trouser press. The room has been designed within an inch of its life - screens in fabric, wood and metal dividing the space, etched glass panels - as has the lighting and tableware, and not always in a good way. At 9pm the lights were suddenly dimmed so low I could barely see the plate in front of me. It may explain why I knocked over the spindly wine-glass holders which they use to serve their three-strong tastings of Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling. It was the second to be sent flying by our table.

Then there is the menu, which is another one of those tapas jobs, three courses being so very last year, apparently. Happily, the waiters don't make any contrived speeches built around the restaurant's name - 'Let us guide you through the maze of these dishes to a central point of self-discovery which ...' - because I might have decked them; I am tired of being lectured to by waiters on how to eat in restaurants. They do, however, suggest you choose six to eight dishes each, which is a clear lesson in over-ordering.

What saves Maze, what makes it one of the most interesting new restaurants to arrive in London this year, is the thing that can save any restaurant: the chef. Jason Atherton knows what he's doing. The menu may read as if it is in desperate thrall to this year's must-have ingredients - there are references to daikon and pork cheeks and piquillo peppers - but Atherton has the culinary intelligence not to overplay his hand. I first tried his cooking at the long-departed L'Anis, where he served a salad of artichokes and truffles as the starter on a £12.50 express lunch menu, which was a wonder to behold. Since then, he has been overseeing restaurants in Dubai for Ramsay, before taking time off to hone his menu of 20 dishes.

In a list this long there are bound to be a few duds, but most are pleasing and some are exemplary.

I know this because I tasted every single one. This is not as Mr Creosote as it sounds. There were five of us that evening, which works out at just four savoury dishes each, a mere half of the maximum suggested by the waiters, and we were more than satisfied. Yes, they are small and perfectly formed, but they are also rather rich.

Happily, you do not need to be so to enjoy them. The prices start at £3.50 for a cup of dense, assertive seafood bisque, flavoured with anise, crab and a dash of sweet-corn puree. The most expensive dish is £8.50 and that gets you a generous piece of aged English beef with a small lobe of foie gras, accompanied by snails on a light garlic puree. In between these points of light and dark, at around £6 each, comes a procession of cleverness: there are robustly seasoned scallops which arrive with purees of musky cauliflower and sweet, spiced golden raisins; and there is honey and soy quail, the breast roasted, the doll's house-sized leg confited, which is accompanied by a Persian saffron chutney retaining all the aromatics that spice can offer.

There are other stars: a traffic light-green risotto with peas, broad beans, wood sorrel and the forest-ripe stench of truffles, or those pig cheeks roasted to a comforting fibrousness and glazed with honey and cloves, atop a stew of asparagus, roasted chorizo and cocoa beans. A lot of the dishes have their subtleties - a forgotten spice that kicks in at the end, a herb that makes its point without shouting - but none of them is exactly restrained. Atherton wants you to remember what you've eaten.

The downside is that if a dish misfires, it's hard to forget it. A thinly sliced carpaccio of tuna tried to make its point more through the addition of sesame oil than anything else. A piquillo pepper filled with salt cod was pungent but uninspiring. But neither of these dishes costs more than £4 so who's complaining? To put this in perspective, three courses at most of Gordon Ramsay's other restaurants - Claridge's, Angela Hartnett at the Connaught, PÀtrus - costs between £55 and £60 a head, before wine. Here you can do the full works for two-thirds of that, and much less if you fancy, for cooking of equal flair and precision. What's more, you really could drop in for just a plate or two at the bar, while those themed wine flights - glasses of three different wines - from £14 each also encourage experimentation. They just have to get rid of the ludicrous toppling holders soon, or someone could have their eye out.

Personally, I could imagine stopping off here just for a pudding or three. At £6 each - a mere £3 for a half portion - who could resist a perfect chocolate fondant with sea salt and almond ice cream, or lemon- and thyme-marinated peach with basil sorbet? Clearly not me. In a year dominated by restaurants reinventing tapas, it's pleasing to see one do it so well. It would be even more pleasing if, as a result, nobody else tried to do it ever again.