Belgravia Thai proves fruitful

This review was first published in December 2001.

The Bangkok-based owners of The Mango Tree might be a little surprised at how their lovely new restaurant looks right now. Their carefully feng-shuied, geometrically laid-out expanse of space, with its soothing shades of caramel and taupe, its beautifully dressed staff who bow and salaam, its bespoke crockery and its minimalism, has been draped with a selection of the naffest Christmas decorations you're likely to see this side of a branch of Poundstretchers. What the largely tourist customers made of it was anyone's guess.

It's not the only schizophrenic element: the menu, too, belies the elegance of the room - it's gaudily printed on to the kind of heavy card usually reserved for toddlers' books and features photographs of food and irritating aphorisms. Then there's the greeter: unlike the rest of the staff who sport traditional robes, this person is dressed like a 1930s American gangster.

The food, however - prepared by 'local' chefs with Thai experts as 'mentors' - is largely rather fine. Nothing to frighten the horses: Thai staples, sympathetically prepared, such as a dish of fish cakes made with fresh, whole prawns and a translucent, honeyed plum sauce. Or a sirloin beef salad, the vegetables wafer thin, the meat seared and tender and the flavourings chilliexplosive. Rice cakes with that familiar texture of extruded polystyrene were sauced with a delicious-slurry of minced chicken and prawn, sweet with coconut. Chargrilled monkfish was bathed in a too-fish-saucy green curry - this, apart from the tacky tinsel, was the only duff note.

Location is Victoria/Belgravia borders, prices are pure Belgravia: we paid about £90 for two.

The Mango Tree
Grosvenor Place, London, SW1X 7EQ