Tower 42, 25 Old Broad Street, London EC2 (020 7877 7703). Meal for two, including drinks: £220
You can tell a lot about a place by the punters it attracts. By that measure the City Social, Jason Atherton's new restaurant on the 24th floor of Tower 42 in the City, is to be avoided, at least by me. Early on I am waiting at the bar where I am approached by a middle-aged woman with hair the colour of the peroxide aisle at Boots. "I don't normally interrupt people," she says with the nasal twang of Alison Steadman's Beverly in Abigail's Party. "But I'll make an exception for you. I'm a newly elected Ukip MEP and a real foodie and I'd like to invite you to lunch."
It speaks much for the Liberal-Left bubble I inhabit that I am astonished she should admit to her Ukip victory. But she's said it with such enthusiasm that it's clear she's said it before and been met with applause. Not this time. "You support a party which attracts racists, homophobes and bigots," I say. "Lunch is not going to happen." Her lips quiver. "You're… you're the bigot," she shouts. And she storms off. I suppose in the sense that I am bigoted against bigots I am indeed a bigot, but only over a very narrow bandwidth.
City Social, the latest in a line of London restaurants with the S word in the title, really isn't very. It is all the very worst of the 1980s revisited. It's full of clumping tumours of men, jangling change in their pockets and barking at each other about the latest position taken by Millennium Capital. There are large tables of men, with hard jaws and bald heads and glazed eyes from the working hours, boasting, and stamping and clapping each other on the shoulders. The testicle count is enormously high here, which is fitting because there's an awful lot of bollocks at City Social.
The place is fitted out in the 427 shades of brown visible to the naked eye so as to suggest an old gentlemen's club: curving leather banquettes by the windows, wood trim everywhere, dark floors that suck what available light there is so that menus have to be read by the torch app on your smartphone. Except it's only just opened and has the whiff of the glue-gunned stage set.
They try to serve cocktails in pewter tankards, as if it's a proper old inn that is slipping into the Thames. It isn't. You can tell that from the wraparound view of London up here. It should be said that the chaps behind the bar quickly nod agreement when I laugh in the face of pewter and ask for a bloody glass. Indeed, the barmen are the most human aspect of the whole place.
The rest is faff and bother and heel click. It's the kind of place where dishes are brought on trays by one person but delivered by another in a clumsy dance that stops all conversation; where waiters are drilled to scrape the table for crumbs none can see; where if you decline bread they will remove your bread plate so you may never change your mind. The staff behave as if constantly on the edge of being bawled out by the customers. (Nothing to do with me being recognised; the PR company later made it clear that they didn't know I'd been in.)
Wine service is the pits. It's one of those lists priced to make you feel inadequate. It's priced to give the tedious men barking at each other about Millennium Capital a way to look interesting by spending stupid amounts on wines with names they can't pronounce. I ask the sommelier to find me a bottle of Pinot Noir for under £50. He puffs out his cheeks, shakes his head, points at things costing £56 and, at one point, something costing £99 which isn't Pinot Noir. "It's very difficult with Pinot Noir," he says. No it isn't, I tell him. You can get a great one for under a tenner wholesale. It turns out there is one for under £50 – a Chilean for £49 – but I spot it after he has left our table. The man either doesn't know his own list or wants us to spend more.
All this grind and hand wringing and willy-waving makes the food an afterthought, which is a shame. At his best Jason Atherton, who oversees the kitchen here for the consultants Restaurant Associates, which actually runs the venue, can be very good indeed. Witness his seafood linguine: a coil of silky pasta lies in a bowl surrounded by curls of crisped squid, steamed mussels and cockles and a dice of razor clam on the shell. On to this is poured a seafood velouté that is heavy with the cooking juices. Aside from the irritation of wrestling the sauce boat off the waiter so you can have more, it is about as good a seafood pasta dish as you could hope to find in London. As it should be for £14.
But Atherton does have a tendency to overwork things. What might be a great steak tartare – heaps of chopped and seasoned prime beef scattered about the plate – is undermined by splodges of "dried vinegar", a vinegar gel, the acidity of which bullies the subtleties of the meat. A beautiful tomato salad with tomato jelly and sprinkled with basil granita is let down by tomatoes which are like some of the clientele: all right to look at but with little to say for themselves.
Technically, mains are a masterclass. There are pieces of rabbit saddle, bound together and wrapped in ham to form a cylinder, plus an impressive rabbit sausage and a side dish of a barley-like grain with braised rabbit. A duck dish brings hunks of breast and boulangerie potatoes and a berry compote. Technically impressive they may be, but they lack heart and soul. About the meat there is the raw squidge and bloodiness of sous-vide. The animal proteins have been denatured under vacuum, but not uproariously cooked. A kind of perfection has been achieved; it is not the kind I enjoy.
Dessert, at least, is without a fault: a foamy strawberry soufflé, a classic custard tart with a welcome dusting of ground nutmeg. But the whole effect is deadening. Across from Tower 42 is the Heron Tower with, at the top, Duck & Waffle, looking down upon us. Midway through my meal I look up and know that if it's dinner and a view I'm after, that's where I'd rather be. It's 20 floors higher, 50% cheaper and 100% more fun.
Jay's news bites
■ If you do want dinner at altitude you really should cross the road to Duck & Waffle on the 40th floor of the Heron Tower. Being so much higher it boasts a better view, nobody takes themselves too seriously, plus they serve brown paper bags of crispy pigs' ears which taste like Frazzles. All that and fluffy waffles with crisp-skinned duck confit, an egg and spiced maple syrup – it's perfect drunk's food. Oh, and they're open 24 hours (duckandwaffle.com).
■ The Japanese restaurant chain Benihana, founded in New York in 1964, is celebrating its 50th birthday by proving exactly how old and out of touch with the times it is. Until the end of August it's serving a nine-course Keiko menu for £30 a head. To qualify for this deal? You must have two XX chromosomes. Yup, it's for women only. Give me strength etc (benihana.co.uk).
■ Commiserations to the newly opened Grillstock in Bath, an American barbecue restaurant serving long-smoked pork shoulder and ribs, which played host to the fire brigade recently after a passerby called them in. Because they could smell smoke. Well yes... (grillstock.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
