Dining for grown-ups

To get to the dining part of The International on the old Corney And Barrow site in St Martin's Lane, you have to brave a couple of black-clad door heavies and a loud, smoky downstairs bar. It's not the ideal introduction to what's trying to be a fairly serious restaurant.

Once upstairs, the atmosphere's calmer: to the point of boredom, actually. I struggle to recollect anything about the room: it was an exercise in corporate featurelessness. The only prevailing memory was of the noise from downstairs (it's a kind of mezzanine arrangement). But the food's not bad - not earthshattering, but not bad.

Salt-and-pepper chilli squid was weirdly underseasoned; its chilli dip tasted suspiciously bottled. Duck livers on brioche were good, rosily pink inside, their beetroot 'jam' and brioche adding a nice touch of sweetness; but the smallness of both dishes hinted at more corporate behaviour, this time portion control. 'Saltimbocca' of monkfish wasn't quite correct: it had the required Parma ham coat, but featured roasted tomatoes instead of sage; it came on a parsnip purèe and was rather too liberally anointed with caper butter. A bit tastebudjangling.

Over-unctuous, too, was rump of lamb, which lolled on a gratin of sweet potato and pea purèe; the meat, however, was excellent. With wine, we paid about £40 a head for these pleasures. The International is brought to you by the people who own the Rock Garden and the Gardening Club; it appears to be their attempt at a grown-up offering. But someone should tell them that grown-up doesn't have to mean dull.