Boulevard Bar & Dining Room

A true representative of the new breed of eateries that are bringing a welcome uplift to the social life of London, offering high standards in every way. This is particularly true of Soho, home of the louche approach to entertainment, where night is day and day is night.

For many the bar is about as far as it goes, which is hardly surprising when your eye travels down the list of inventive, as well as regular, cocktails available. Those who value the names they bear every bit as much as the kick they have will enjoy a field day. A French Martini for instance, whilst it might not have found favour with 007, contains "cocktail heaven", found in the balance of vodka, pineapple juice and luscious Chambord raspberry liqueur.

But it is the dining room that those with a taste for the good things of life will feel particularly at home. Nigel Trebble is Head Chef and his bringing together of two dominant cuisines is a signal for relatively simple food prepared with flair and care. A flexible menu permits an egalitarian approach on the part of the customer, and should you insist on starting with the pudding and finishing with smoked haddock and lentil soup nobody would bat an eyelid, except possibly those on the next tables.

Single dishes are de riguer, a good example of which could be the Boulevard burger, served with pastrami, pickles, ice berg lettuce, tomato and horseradish mayonnaise. Now that the honest burger has been re-elected to respectability (though his rogue cousins are still about), this is an absolutely OK dish, particularly if speed is on the agenda.

Forget the haddock and lentil and try the crisp belly pork salad with a dandelion salad and mustard dressing, or a spicy duck tartar with orange salad. Salads and pasta are there in plenty, with fish and shellfish to follow. The combination of very root vegetables, as in a whole baked red mullet with lentils and braised turnip, is an interesting one, likewise the baked fillet of hake with cabbage, bacon and parsley sauce. On the shellfish front half a Cornish lobster with peas, fèves, asparagus and chervil is an absolute steal.

Rare breeds get a look in on this enlightened menu, one of which is the black faced lamb with ratatouille, olive oil hollandaise and mint sauce, whilst amongst the very much less than rare breeds (the Highlands are awash with them) venison chops, a delicious cut from a well formed stag, are but one. Even the vegetarian dishes not only look, but actually are, very good with a hot mixed bean salad graced by a chervil and red wine dressing top of the pops.

Desserts carry a mouthwatering raspberry clafoutis with clotted cream, or for those with limitless capacity for punishment a ginger cake with banana and vanilla custard.

The space left to tell you about the wine list is woefully inadequate, so really all I can do is advise you to go there and savour for yourself. There are excellent by-the-glass numbers, with St Emilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux 2001 at a shade under £9, some notable dessert wines, and excellent value bottles from some of the less obvious sources.