An artless new home for Theo

Who knew a veal chop could be so beautiful? It sits on the plate oozing fragrant juices, its outside scarred with the fierce heat of the chargrill, its insides the perfect, palest pink of babies' ears. It tastes magnificent, too: Limousin, milk-fed meat, melting and delicate, with just a suggestion of the beef it could have grown up to be.

Slicked over it is some tastebud-tumescing salsa verde and the vivid, grassy green of bloody good olive oil. Liquoricey fennel and earthy chard are ideal playmates. A quarter of lemon - a pleasingly misshapen beast, uneconomically flown in from Amalfi - adds the final spritz to one of the best meat dishes I've had in recent memory.

But that's the main event. Before this super-chop arrives, we've had plenty more to drool over. Heck, even bread is memorable: chewy sourdough, quick-frazzled and soaked with more of that oil until it's a toasty, smoky dish in itself. It comes with little, greyish olives that pack a flavour punch and a sweet, lusciously lactic buffalo mozzarella that tastes as though it has been made moments earlier.

Fritto misto, with batter so crisp it rustles, is an Italian trat standard taken to gorgeous lengths: two sage leaves sandwich a sliver of anchovy; violet artichokes add seasonal heft; the squid gives way to the teeth in the most satisfactory way.

There's eel (sadly not British but Dutch) of velvety, subtle smokiness, served with weeny beets tasting of wintry loam on their own peppery leaves. And there are agnolotti, where pasta has achieved a finely tuned balance between paper-thin delicacy and al dente, stuffed with the gameyness of long-stewed veal, partridge, pancetta and Parmesan and bathed simply in good butter.

Only small details blot the copybook: a seafood risotto that relies too heavily on luxury ingredients such as lobster and scallops and not enough on depth of flavour; it was also cooked about, oh, 45 seconds too long. And the cool, silky trembliness of a rich pannacotta could have happily lived without its bullying wodge of claggy chestnut puree. Loved the crunch of the scattered hazelnut croquante, though.

OK, OK, I hear you. Stop getting off on your food porn and tell us about the actual restaurant. Truth is, as you can probably tell, I'm trying to put it off. Because, alas, all this fantastic food is to be had in an environment with about as much personality as a lowfat, carb-free cheeseburger, no fries, hold the mustard. It's like the 'fayn dayning' section of an airport hotel.

The InterContinental's refurb has cost a reputed £60million - to paraphrase the divine Dolly Parton, it costs a hell of a lot of money to look this dull. You walk through a lobby done out in best international hotel style - red plush, supersized chandeliers - to a long, windowless room tricked out in shades of brown.

The layout seems carefully designed so that there's no such thing as a bad table; it's just that there's no such thing as a good one either. Columns obscure your view of the other diners; by craning my neck I managed to make out a bunch of wealthy tourists, many accessorised by bored-looking children.

Why on Earth has Theo Randall landed himself here? And who is he anyway? A culinary force to be reckoned with, that's who. He was head chef and partner at The River Cafe, the one who wasn't Ruth Rogers or Rose Gray. This was the guy at the actual coalface; it was he who won Michelins and plaudits as the best Italian restaurant in Europe - and, yes, that included Italy.