Flor, 1 Bedale Street, London SE1 9AL (020 3319 8144). Small plates £9-£13, bigger plates £18-£29, desserts £5-£8. Wines from £24

On the night Flor opened the doors to its sliver of a townhouse by London’s Borough Market, one restaurant writer tweeted indignantly that he hadn’t been able to get a table, despite the website’s claim that they held back space for walk-ins. Well, doh! As Homer might have said in the restaurant critic episode of The Simpsons. Flor wasn’t just any old opening. It wasn’t some witty Peruvian-Greek small plates mashup utilising seasonal produce cooked over logs harvested from Peckham’s Goose Green. It’s the second restaurant from the team behind the high-flying, adored Lyle’s, which has enough awards and citations to make Meryl Streep feel like an underachiever.

Chef James Lowe and manager John Ogier may have claimed they were launching an ever so humble bakery-led dining room, for when you feel just a bit peckish. The rest of us were entitled to go, “Whatever, boys.” Accordingly, it has been mobbed by my colleagues who, in fine journalistic tradition, got to the story first. This is me confessing that, while it only opened in July, I am late through the door. It also means I am burdened by high expectations, because so far it has been a chorus of wet-lipped hallelujahs and aerated dribble for the concise menu of idiosyncratic dishes. Where Lyle’s makes a point of Britishness, here they say they are looking deeper into Europe. We can all get behind that, right?

The moment you crash through the door it becomes clear this really is an elbows-on-the-table sort of place, not least because there’s nowhere else to put them. On the ground floor there is a high counter around an open kitchen and a few tiny tables at which to sit knee to knee. Waiters are mostly thin. At the back is a corkscrew of black painted metal spiral staircase, which must be a nightmare to negotiate in heels.

It leads to another tight space of tiny tables and compact banquettes. The small tables are an issue because it is 2019. Therefore, you will not get something as banal as one plate each at a time. The food comes in whatever order the kitchen deigns, even if there isn’t enough space to place the crockery. It’s a clatter of dishes crammed together, which only adds to the sense of dissonance and discord.

Before anybody thinks I’m about to be arsey for the sake of it, be in no doubt: they serve some very good food. I understood some of the attendant noise and hoopla. A tart of sweetly roasted datterini tomatoes, bursting from their skins as if optimistically they bought their clothes a size too small, lies on a rugged purée of violet aubergines. It is dotted with snowy peaks of feta. All of this summery loveliness is encased in a miraculously short, crisp pastry shell. It is a serious looker but, more importantly, eating it quickly justifies the desecration of its beauty.

Scarlet prawns come in two parts. The slippery, sticky meat is served raw, dressed with the fragrant citrus and spice kick of orange yuzu kosho. The big fat heads are grilled and served separately for maximum suckage. And then there is the blistered sourdough flatbread laid with garlic and the soft elasticity of Spenwood sheep’s cheese, piled in turn with big fat clams. A clam pizza is a cracking idea, which I would happily meet again.

But other things are bizarre or clumsy or, whisper it, just not very nice. Broad salted anchovies laid on toast with a gossamer overcoat of translucent lardo sounds like all the good salty fatty things in one place. But the cured back fat is cut so thickly it’s less a silky shimmer than a duvet. (As ever, you’ll find my picture of this over on Instagram). A heap of salad with a thick brown satay-like dressing of hazelnuts and preserved lemons is simply odd. And then there’s the dish listed as “summer vegetables, sesame”. It turns out to be that old 70s stager crudités. I’ve seen that movie and I know how it so often ends: with a furrowed brow of disappointment.

For it to work the vegetables need fire and bite. These are artfully chosen. They are crisp and also exceedingly bland. The bowl of tahini dressing to drag them through is all the silky, deep, lusty tones we expect of tahini. It’s also completely unsuited to the job. This needs acidity, something to make the vegetables more than themselves, but it’s absent. And suddenly the £9 price tag for a plate of veg and a lacklustre dressing feels like the price you pay for eating out in London right now.

It simply doesn’t hang together as a meal. It’s a bunch of edible things, corralled together on one piece of paper, with very little to say to one another. A well-written menu should be a matrix that you can plot a route through in any direction, and still come up with something that makes sense. Instead, I feel like I’ve been at a tasting session: here are a few dishes the kitchen is working on. What do you think? Well, I liked the tomato tart and the flatbread, and thank you for having me.

It’s the same at dessert. Almond granita with plums and flaked almonds feels like it’s making up the numbers. The brown butter cakes, crisp crust giving way to a sweet syrupy sponge, are a bit of baking with which I could be lifelong friends. And now I’m exhausted and confused. The item that sums it all up is the bread. Lyle’s is famed for its sourdough. The Flor press release proudly announced they’d used the same starter with which they opened Lyle’s five years ago. And yes, the crust is fabulous: both crunchy and tearable. But the crumb is weirdly moist, as if underbaked. I find myself rolling it into a damp ball like I used to do with Mother’s Pride when I was a kid. You should not be able to do that with bread coming out of a kitchen run by James Lowe.

Staff are keen, even if they do the “no notebook” thing, which always puts me on edge. Still, it all moves along at a clip. But I leave trying to work out what happened to me. I know this review is what political pollsters call an outlier. It diverges from the consensus. So be it. Sadly, I can’t pretend I think a restaurant made total sense just to be in the popular place on the scatter graph.

News bites

Like James Lowe of Flor, Lee Tiernan was also the head chef at St John Bread and Wine, though his place, Black Axe Mangal at London’s Highbury Corner, is a very different beast. There’s a graffiti-covered wood-fired oven, and both music and food to rattle your eyeballs. Go for the likes of roasted suckling pig with white beans and sriracha, or their blistered flatbread laid with grilled beef, served rare with a tomato salsa and pickled chilli (blackaxemangal.com).

Congratulations to the winners of the Italian Awards, recently announced in Manchester, which recognise Italian restaurants across the country. Entrants are nominated by the public, with winners judged by a panel. This year they include Ristorante Sergio in Chester for best pasta, and Stable Hearth in Darlington for best pizza.

A familiar set of Michelin stars this year, with the highest awards in London going to French chefs who already have three stars in France. Much more interesting: guest presenter Raymond Blanc, telling the Big Hospitality website that the restaurant business needed to get its working practices in order, and “stop self-harming”, so as to become a profession “where every parent would want to send their kids”.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1

• This article was amended on Sunday 20 October to correct the caption on the brown butter cakes image and to correct the spelling of practices.