Blue-blooded boozer

At ground level, The Princess is a normal gastropub with the usual battered furniture and boards - bare and black. They serve Staropramen, Hoegaarden, London Pride, IPA and a comforting menu of gent-pleasers: fish and chips, sausages, pies. But once you've negotiated the wrought-iron spiral staircase, this pub on the Clerkenwell/Shoreditch borders shifts up a gear.

I was eating with two food writers. We all made comparisons with The Farm, the superslick Fulham gastro which looks and acts about as much like a pub as Sketch. It's a posh place. With sexy paintings, vintage wallpaper, specially commissioned padded carvers to park easy on and a wine list that covers all the bases up to £100, The Princess is a gastro fit for, well, a princess.

It used to be a den of iniquity owned by a character called One-Eyed Ron. Some serious gastrofication has taken place. The chef/co-owner, Zim Sutton, calls this food Modern Australian, but ingredients are drawn entirely from the Middle East and Mediterranean basin - ingredients like pistachios and the lemony spice, sumac, liven up stuffed squid; chorizo and manchego butter snuggle up decadently with a T-bone. Peas are served with ricotta, lemon zest and mint.

The menu works a vein of rustic maximalism. The squid went down well with the boys, but the stuffing muddied the flavours, carpaccio of beef was too thickly sliced and the meat swamped in oil. I wanted something light to start, but the fried zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese and pine nuts were not the light, pretty blooms I imagined but soggy and collapsed into something that tasted good, but for stodgy, deep-fried reasons.

The next course was better. Pata negra (acorn fed) pork cheeks braised with morcilla (spicy black pudding) and rioja were dark and musky, unlike any pork I have ever tasted. Barbecued chicken in allspice and ginger was tender and crispy in the right places and had fatty skin and full-flavoured flesh to support those warm spices. The barbecuing was spot on. A piece of tuna was perfectly seared and slightly fatty so that it was warmer and less metallic in the mouth.

We set about the puddings and cheese like we were hungry, when, in fact, they were just irresistible. We had chocolate fondant with ricotta ice cream, meringues with cardamom mascarpone and rosewater raspberries, and two stellar cheeses - sherry washed manchego and a mild but complex blue, picos de Europa. There are some crass touches here - a heavy hand with the oil, some clumsy execution, but largely The Princess serves unique food that works.

The Princess of Shoreditch
76 Paul Street, EC2A 4NE