Dining with the fashion pack

Brompton Cross is still ground zero for high-end British fashion - Sloane Street, Bond Street, South Molton Street and Westbourne Grove, all rolled into one.

As such, it is also the number one stamping ground for the ladies who lunch. Within a circle scarcely any bigger than Kate Moss's waist you can find Joe's café, the Brompton Brasserie, Itsu, the Bibendum Oyster Bar, The Collection, The Enterprise and Daphne's.

If you're a newly divorced multi-millionaire on the lookout for your next wife, this is where to take your Bentley Continental out for a spin.

Aubaine is a relatively recent entrant into this crowded field, a Parisian-style brasserie that's also a boulangerie and patisserie. Indeed, it starts selling freshly baked pains au chocolat at 8am, and brunch is available from 8am to 12pm during the week and until 2pm at weekends.

The menu changes throughout the day, but in essence Aubaine serves some variant of lunch from 8am to 10.30pm. It even sells little mini-quiches to take away - just in case you wake up in the middle of the night and feel like a spot of lunch.

Naturally, my first thought on entering Aubaine was that I was woefully underdressed. I'd arranged to meet an ex-girlfriend there and since Brompton Cross is only four miles from Shepherd's Bush I decided to bicycle. This meant I arrived in a muck sweat wearing an Arctic parka, a woolly hat and bicycle clips.

It would be an exaggeration to say that every head in the room swivelled in my direction, but if I hadn't been able to point to my companion, who was already seated at a nearby table, I doubt I would have made it past the maitre d'. Not only was I the only straight man in the restaurant, I was the only person who didn't have a pair of designer sunglasses perched on his or her head.

I was glad it was an ex I was having lunch with and not my wife because it's hard to stay focused on the person you're talking to in an environment like this.

Whichever table I looked at, there were two beautiful Euro-Sloanes sipping peppermint tea and nibbling on croissants. Even when I summoned all my powers of concentration and fixed my attention on my companion, I would immediately be distracted by the arrival of some gorgeous, leggy blonde.

It was like trying to have lunch in the middle of a catwalk - and this was on a cold winter's day in early February. God knows what it'll be like during London Fashion Week.