QC, 252 High Holborn, London WC1 (020 7829 7000). Lunch for two, including wine and service, £90
The restaurant of the Renaissance Chancery Court Hotel on London's High Holborn, called rather ponderously QC, looks like the kind of room where characters in Robert Ludlum novels go to check their numbered accounts. It's all marble and pillar and wide open spaces, as befits the former banking hall of the Pearl Assurance Company. Towards the end of our meal, when every waiter had disappeared from view, I wondered out loud whether we should do a runner. My companion, JD, considered our prospects. 'You could get up a serious head of steam on the way to the door,' he said. Perhaps JD has experience of these things. Me, I haven't got up a head of steam since 1974 when I came third in the Byron Court Primary School sack race.
Happily we didn't scarper before pudding, because it was the best part of the meal. But there was definitely something about the heavily overengineered setting that undermined the experience. The chef, Jun Tanaka, is a man of serious talent. He's not afraid of strong flavours. He knows how to balance ingredients. But his food deserves a bit more intimacy, something to bring your gaze back down to the plate from the tacky cornice and gilding above you.
Let me take this one backwards, because the puddings really were something else. Mine was a coconut mousse with what was described as a pineapple carpaccio, which seemed like a silly bit of language until the plate turned up, laid with remarkably thin slices of the fruit. How is it done? I have no idea. With a very, very sharp blade I suspect. The mousse was soft and delicate. JD's pudding was even cleverer: a chilled chocolate fondant - again more a mousse - but with a liquid centre. We spent ages trying to work out how that effect was achieved.
My piggy main course brought a dense roast fillet of pork and a chunk of confit pork belly on a punchy stew of lentils dressed with grain mustard. JD's crisp, roast sea bass had a rare - and brave - fishy pungency that worked well with the sweet peppers that accompanied it. Curiously, for it is usually the reverse, the low point was the starters. There was nothing hugely wrong with them, though my asparagus soup with truffle emulsion and a poached egg could have been hotter. They were just a little workmanlike. JD's tartare of tuna with chives and ginger ticked all the boxes - fresh, light, herby - without setting the world alight.
At lunchtime all this is advertised at £21.50 for three courses, which seems like good value until they unnecessarily sold us a side dish of spinach at £4 and charged us £3.90 for an orange juice. Suddenly, without a drop of alcohol, the bill was £70. I'll say it again: Jun Tanaka's talents deserve better.
