Congratulations, Mr Conran

This review was published in January 2002

'You can't miss it,' I told my friend, when he asked for directions to Tom Conran's latest venture, Lucky Seven. 'It looks like a cross between a greasy spoon, a diner and a Romany caravan.'

The Romany influence is discernible in the swirling, almost psychedelic painting of the name on the shopfront. There are obvious influences from American diner culture, while the location, opposite one of West London's less aesthetically pleasing experiments in high-rise social housing, smacks of the greasy spoon.

There is something genuinely American about a diner: it was the place you went for consistent food and an abundance of weak coffee wherever you happened to be. The diner is one of the few places in the world where reality is agreeably in tune with my expectations.

And so it was at Lucky Seven. Lucky Seven isn't a real diner, any more than Notting Hill is a real part of London. Lucky Seven is cleverer than that, it is a carefully constructed Truman Show-like apparatus where young men trying to look like moody photographers can hang around with young women in low-slung jeans perfecting their best impersonations of cigarette-smoking, coffee-drinking cool. Occasionally, a real-life taxi driver or man with dreadlocks will wander in to give an extra blast of verisimilitude.

Tom Conran is a master at reinventing classic food and drink sites for the inhabitants of the bohemian Disneyland of W11. Tom's Deli is Dean & Deluca on a human scale for the trust-fund kids who need harissa in a hurry or tapenade in a trice. The Cow is the pub Notting Hill style, and Lucky Seven is the burger bar rendered in a way that haute boh?mes will warm to. It is tiny: six booths with wood veneer tables and vinyl banquettes. A tin ceiling, a knowingly kitsch framed piece of 'art' depicting a pair of trucks, a giant - and I suspect rather valuable - vintage Pepsi-Cola clock and a couple of Paolozzis that were given to Tom as a child by the artist comprise the look. It is up to the proprietor and his patrons to complete the atmosphere.

Although the place had only been open a few days it was already full, people sharing banquettes or turning away in disappointment at being unable to squeeze in. Ours was the only banquette that went unshared, which I can only put down to the fact that we looked neither suitably dishevelled nor grumpy and were therefore to be treated with extreme caution.

In best diner tradition, I called for a root beer, while my friend attempted to raise the tone with a glass of red wine. I won, in that the tone remained defiantly unraised and the root beer was a triumphant cocktail of calories, sweeteners and colourings that I can wholeheartedly recommend. The only cavil with a cheeseburger topped with Monterey Jack cheese was how unAmerican it was in proportion; however, it made up for this with an abundance of that very un-American quality: flavour. Crab cakes were even better, a pungent salsa was the perfect accompaniment to four dainty doilies of carefully fried crabmeat. Cheesecake was a little farinaceous, but nevertheless brought lunch to a close on an agreeably New York note.

Service, too, was pleasantly American, and I reckon that it was the cup of tea ordered by my friend to kick off lunch that pushed the bill to over £30 for two.

I caught sight of Tom Conran slaving over a griddle and rushed forward to congratulate him. I asked him whether he had any other gastronomic institutions in his sights. He said that he might tackle soul food, an idea I tried to veto on the grounds that it was simply too Notting Hill. Next he suggested that he might have a go at a Mexican restaurant. I look forward to tasting my first Conran quesadilla before too long.