Cheerful but not cheap

A while ago, I filed the press information on the revamped restaurant in private gambling club Aspinalls, noting that it's now open to non-members. Sadly, nobody seems to have advised the folk at the front desk, who regard my companion and me with a mixture of mild astonishment and deep mistrust.

'Where did you hear this?' they grill us. 'In the Evening Standard,' I blurt mendaciously. Their mouths are saying 'one moment' but their faces are saying 'yeah, right'. Behind us, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and party are getting twitchy at the unexpected hold-up in proceedings.

More grilling, stern glances and photo-taking - all we need is the serial number below our furtive-looking mugshots - then the tension lifts. We're in! And we're members! For the night only, perhaps, but from here on in, it doesn't get much swankier. Suddenly everyone in this over-gilded, sumptuously appointed townhouse is lovely to us, even though we quite clearly don't belong. I'm guessing they don't often host a pair of unaccompanied women with nothing more on their minds than dinner.

I thought Ducasse at the Dorchester was a theme park for the super-rich.

I know nothing. Here's the Aspinalls in-house magazine, populated with characters called Drummond Money-Coutts and Balthazar Fabricius and peppered with ads for improbably large diamonds and yachts. What I take to be a piece on professional hit men (well, it is called 'Gun for hire') is a blameless puff for some luxury Caribbean property. But with this lot, you never know.

The bar is beautiful, all jewelled silks, goatskin sofas, chandeliers and colonial artefacts. It's hard to believe it's a recent revamp. The barman asks if I know new head chef Alberico Penati from Harry's Bar, his previous gig. I lie again.

Expertly mixed cocktails arrive with vast, vividly green queen olives and generous chunks of fine, grainy Parmesan. Then canapés, including quails' eggs with caviar. And fat, deepfried king prawns with sweet chilli. We start to fret about what it's all going to cost. Perhaps our lanky, Stephen Merchant-alike sommelier picks up on this because he steers us to a house Chablis: 'There's a smaller mark-up on this one.'

I have never heard of Penati, possibly because his background is in the ultra-rarefied confines of members' clubs. What I have managed to glean is a slavish devotion from privileged clients who rave that he's the best Italian chef in London. Hmm. These are the kinds of people who pile into Cipriani and San Lorenzo - what do they know?

We're given two menus, one the expected Italian, one making major detours to China and the Middle East. Golly, why could that be? We're too scared to look at prices; but lemon risotto with ragu of scampi jumps out at us. It's £30. For a starter.

We're wafted upstairs to the restaurant, a kind of Marie Antoinette version of a conservatory. It makes us giggly. There appears to be four waiters to every table, maybe more for Sir Andrew. A tiny man sits with a giant, stunning blonde; her fetish-waspie belt is just about at his eye level. At another table, craggy chaps and their fur-coated dates are having acres of pungent white truffle grated over their food; strangely, we aren't offered any.

We do have that risotto. Bloody nice - perfectly al dente rice, sweet seafood in a pleasingly retro sauce - but it's weeny. Thank goodness there's a wooden board groaning with fennelly salami, excellent, home-made focaccia and anchovy pizzette. I'm beginning to think the way to go here is to simply drink while snarfing all the freebies.

My 'Parmigiana baby leeks with speck, sea scallops and capers' is nothing of the sort. It's a couple of accurately seared scallops with a collection of virtually raw veg - broccoli, courgette, leek - faffed into barrel shapes and standing to attention on the plate. What's described oddly as a 'cocotte' of seafood brings more grilled crustaceans - scampi and a vast, rubbery prawn - with more whittled veg. It's pleasant enough if a bit samey. Our inquiry about the whereabouts of Alberico is met with the shadow of a wink: 'He's never far away.'