Bodker wises up with the West

This review was published in October 2001

Opening a couple of doors from the Ivy, it was inevitable that comparisons would be drawn. So let me tell you straight off: Chris Bodker's West Street, a five-storey bar, restaurant, hotel and screening-room complex, is no Ivy.

Bodker is the original City Boy restaurateur. He used to be in high finance and forced down enough expensive dinners in some of the world's best restaurants to convince himself that the restaurateur's life was for him. He duly opened The Avenue in St James's Street.

He quickly followed this with Circus in Soho and then bought Launceston Place and Kensington Place, acquiring the skills of restaurateur Simon Slater and media chef Rowley Leigh.

What always perplexed me was why he did it. He is a successful and competent restaurateur, but neither Circus nor The Avenue ever really lifted my skirt and I am fairly sure Bodker made more moolah shuffling money around the world than he does customers around his restaurant. Perhaps it's that old chestnut of job satisfaction.

While I cannot plumb the inner workings of his mind, I can say that West Street is a big improvement on The Avenue and Circus. On the evening I ate there, the expertise Bodker purchased when he bought Place Restaurants was immediately apparent in the agreeably craggy features of Simon Slater. Slater takes a hands-on approach to the business and, rather than ossifying in the boardroom, he was busy taking orders in the first-floor dining room.

This is the smartest bit of the building. The ground floor functions as a brasserie with wood-fired oven, while the basement is a bar. All three are linked by a lightwell that opens up the space and gives a sense of airiness to an agreeably modern space. The only decorative oddity is a slowly revolving lump of tangled metal that someone has mistaken for a piece of contemporary sculpture. However, if you ignore it, it might go away.

The menu is simple, plain and has more in common with Kensington Place than it does with my memories of The Avenue, which was a relief. I ordered a starter of orrechiette with courgettes and girolles - the pasta pleasantly and nuttily al dente. The sauce had stood a little too long on the plate waiting for the accompanying dish of grilled squid, rocket and chilli, but the dish was still utterly delicious.

As a main course I took a tranche of turbot, that wonderfully aristocratic fish, and was disappointed neither by the succulence of the flesh nor the sober elegance of its preparation (steamed with tomatoes, olive oil and basil). I felt compelled to order a side dish of creamed tomatoes with basil. I was expecting a tomato-based puree not unlike creamed spinach, but I was presented with three half-tomatoes poached in cream. Excellent.

Equally unexpected and tasty was the peach crumble: an individual baked fruit topped with a little mound of caramelised crumble mixture accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice cream. However, the clear winner was the lemon polenta cake with cr?me fraiche - vintage Rowley Leigh. This is the apotheosis of West London comfort food, albeit served in the West End at West End prices - we paid over £100 for dinner for two with two glasses of red wine.

Given recent world events, Bodker could not have picked a worse time to open a restaurant. Nevertheless, on a miserable Tuesday evening, the place was moderately busy and the upstairs screening/function room was packed with a bunch of suits who seemed to be living it up on the corporate ticket with a cabaret-style wine-tasting laid on by Willie Lebus of Bibendum wines.

At one point Bodker came over to tell me that another critic had been in that afternoon and after eating lunch - and I presume downing one too many flagons of cr?me de menthe and Bailey's - pronounced that West Street was the finest restaurant to open in London since 1987.