Buzzy brasserie has charm

The name Menier on those light green chocolate packets with all the medals on them has bushels of goodwill with older cooks. Way back when, in the days when dark, high-cocoa cooking chocolate was hard to find, Menier was the only brand worth seeking out. In January 2004, Monsieur Menier's handsome 1870s factory on Southwark Street was reborn as a theatre, complete with bar and restaurant.

Like most theatre restaurants, the Menier Chocolate Factory has an unusual pattern of business - full at 7pm, empty at 8pm, full again at 9.30pm. The main dining area is a large podium in the middle of the room and you can glimpse the kitchen through a long hatch in one corner. This place has a certain raffish charm and that carries through to the service, which is much as you would expect it to be in a theatre restaurant - frantic or laid-back depending on whether the theatre-goers are at table or safely hived off watching the play.

The menu is in the 'modern-brasserie' idiom: starters, salads, sandwiches, mains, desserts but - and perhaps the semi-captive audience plays a part here --most dishes are expensive. A burger with bacon and cheese needs to be very good indeed to justify a £10 price tag, and here it doesn't quite manage to. Ditto bangers and mash at £8. The cooking is sound but not great: gravadlax (from the starters) comes with pickled cucumber and wholegrain mustard and crème fraiche dressing - fresh, but in search of a more pronounced dill flavour. A risotto of prawn, green pea, lemon and sorrel is well made, with a good texture, but let down by flabby prawns and a £10 price tag (for a main course portion). The foie gras terrine is 'rustic' in style (ie a bit rough and ready) and comes in a huge portion.

From the main courses a sound dish is the roast rump of lamb on spiced sweet potato stack with wilted spinach and tapenade jus --the lamb is cooked about right and the spinach fresh. The burger mentioned earlier is served in ciabatta and with large chunky chips - it's good but not that good.

Thankfully the wine list is much less aggressively priced than the menu, with various sound enough bottles at under £20. Of the desserts listed you feel obliged to have the 'Chocolate and mixed berry brownie with vanilla and Menier chocolate sauce', but it turns out to be a pretty run-of-the-mill dish. You can only wonder what the Victorian chocolatier, Monsieur Menier, would make of it all. The theatre seems to be going great guns, and the theatre-goers are happy eating here after the show which gives the place a real buzz, but nothing can offset the feeling that this is a place where you are asked to pay sharp restaurant prices for pretty lowly dishes.

Dinner for two with wine £60