A restaurant that makes you forget the city

Think of an English summer. No, try. I don't just mean rain at Wimbledon and flooding in my native Yorkshire. Think seaside holidays and fish and chips. Ah, fish and chips. One of many bright spots in a blur of childhood holidays was a takeaway of piping-hot chips and fish in crispy batter -- usually eaten with freezing fingers on the end of a windswept pier. These days, fish suppers are sold in horrible polystyrene trays. Can these be recycled? If not, can we please go back to newspaper?

I've eaten our native dish in some amazing places. Possibly the best of all is in Whitby (where I still make a pilgrimage every year) at the Magpie Café overlooking the icy North Sea, and where the little cliff-top church of St Mary's inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula. But last month it was by the yacht-filled harbour of Monaco, and in January next to the ocean in Santa Monica. And, of course, the magic of this particular meal - no matter what the setting - is that it always conjures up the long vacation and holiday atmosphere.

In search of that elusive taste of summer, I went to Geales restaurant in Notting Hill on a grey, weekday evening. It's not the kind of area you'd imagine would have a chippy, but you'd be wrong. There's been a fish restaurant here since 1939.

Traditional it isn't. From your first glimpse of the snowy-draped tables outside to the many male customers wearing gold signet rings on their little fingers - you know that this will be a posh, ketchup-free zone.

This is a fish and chip restaurant with a twist, which, given the average Notting Hiller, is likely to be from an organic, unwaxed Sicilian lemon. The place has recently undergone a revamp by Mark Fuller and Garry Hollihead who are behind the excellent Embassy and the Inn On The Green. The décor here is stark and utilitarian - leather banquettes and stone-grey walls. If Mussolini had been a restaurant designer, then this would have been a shining example of his work. It was reasonably busy for early on a Tuesday, with sandcastle-searching families tucking in, and was positively lively by the time we left.

It had been a long and exhausting couple of days at work, so I started with pink champagne and softshell crab - which the footballer had never tasted before and was melt-in-the-mouth delicious. We also had a pot of prawns and some scallops, which used to be such a treat but now they're always dull, and my other guest said she was never going to order them again. But it wasn't Geales's fault; she should have realised this long ago.

According to the menu, the fish is sourced in Cornwall (is there any that isn't these days?) and fried in beer batter. The footballer ordered hake, and a big hunk arrived, complemented by a separate bowl of chips. I had a sole as big as an umbrella and the novelist chose pan-fried plaice. Her one complaint was that they were heavy-handed with the butter. The chips were almost a perfect ten. At last!

The mocha tart and cookies and ice cream were delicious, and with coffee and a bottle of Sancerre, the bill came to around £220. Not cheap - but then you wouldn't expect it to be.

There was a moment of excitement when the novelist spotted David (sadly not 'Sir', like his exteam-mate Botham) Gower walking upstairs and disappearing round a corner, but the footballer came back and said that it was just an anonymous middle-aged man with blond, curly hair.

The spookiest thing were the loos - which were as tiny as those you'd find on an aircraft - but they did actually add to my virtual holiday feeling. Bizarrely, the sinks have piles of black stones in them (Why? Did Kelly Hoppen style them?), but it felt almost like a washroom on a large private aircraft. Or maybe I'd had too much Sancerre.