A burnished time warp

I vowed to stay off gastropubs for a while, sick to death of an interchangeable formula of battered furniture and bludgeoned food. What had been a fresh, exciting baby born during the last big recession (wonder what this one is going to throw up) had become a bloated, corporate clone cynically dosing out scraggy lamb shanks to people who'd only recently graduated from KFC.

A couple of weeks ago, I dragged myself unwillingly to The Duke Of Wellington in Marylebone and liked it so much that I wondered if it was time for a rethink. Which is why I find myself back in Smithfield's notorious Fox & Anchor after a gap of several years.

Last time I was here things were very different. For one, I could stay up all night till six in the morning and blearily find myself fancying a mammoth, meat-frenzy breakfast - hold the kidneys, extra haggis - in what was then a moody, verging on skanky, old boozer.

The place smelled of blood, from the stained clothes of the traders from neighbouring Smithfield Market and the oozing black pudding on my plate. You jostled for a table with thick-necked, meaty City traders and night-shift doctors and nurses from nearby St Bart's.

You could wash it down with Black Velvet (Guinness and champers) or Buck's Fizz for the laydees (although that particular species was few and far between; and no, I don't count myself).

So it was sadness all round when it closed a couple of years ago, then worry when it was bought by the Marylebone Warwick Balfour Group, owners of, among other things, the Malmaison chain of hotels. Bound to be a lot of old rubbish, right? Wrong. Seems I've grown up a bit - no more all-nighters - and so has the Fox: a truly lovely job has been done of burnishing this listed art-nouveau treasure.

We're shown past the new zinc-topped bar to the dining area proper at the back and given menus bristling with retro Brit beauties: potted salmon, ham hock with parsley sauce and colcannon, even bacon, egg and chips. Breakfasts (grilled kippers, full Englishes) are still available from 8am.

We have first-rate pea soup, savoury and chunky and laced with generous shards of Ginger Pig ham.

What's misleadingly titled steak and oyster pie is, in fact, a damn fine steak pie: properly slow-cooked meat, rich gravy and the correct marriage between filling and pastry, flanked by a pair of ontheshell oysters. Cod - I'm having too good a time and forget to ask about its sustainability, sorry - is good, but coffined in a slightly hefty, oily batter made with Battersea Beer. Accompanying chips - huge fat jobs, repeatedly fried into floury crispness - are ace.

That's the good news. The bad includes a properly duff Martini - warm glass, too much vermouth. I know I should have something like a pint of Old Growler served in too-twee pewter tankards, but a), a beer-loving pal tells me it's not particularly well kept and b), I hate the stuff.

Pork scratchings are non-crispy, gnarly bits of pig meat, not skin; mushy peas are pointlessly nouveau. Syrup sponge pudding is too much sponge and not enough syrup in a suitably Bird's-ish custard. An otherwise good, squidgy and mustardy Welsh rarebit tastes overwhelmingly of not-cooked-off beer.