Embassy fares well in Mayfair

Though crass, his establishments seemed to attract a certain sort of celeb: the kind who'll go round and round in a revolving door until the flashbulbs start popping. So business boomed.

You've guessed it, I'm not a fan. Until now, that is. Fuller, in partnership with long-time associate, the Michelin-starred Garry Hollihead, has just opened Embassy in Mayfair's Old Burlington Street, a kind of homage to the notorious club of the same name (which he part-ran). During the 1970s and 1980s, the Embassy Club breathed glamour and decadence; today's incarnation, a restaurant on the ground floor with lounge and club below, used to be Legends - a venue renowned for a different, lower-class kind of bad clientele.

Once you brave the three - count 'em! - shaven-headed, blackovercoated, beetlebrowed bouncers (this is not a spot for the easily frightened), the £1.5million refurb delivers quite a dazzle. In style, it's a bit Mirabelle -lite: antique-silvered screens, heavy napery, gleaming silverware and formal-ish service. The effect is glamorously sexy in a Noel Coward-ish sort of way.

Staff are attired according to an unspecified hierarchy: there are girls in burgundy tops with corsages, waitresses in informal uniforms and chaps in suits. Our particular suited chap was memorable for his hustling approach to the wine list: despite our pleading that we were on a budget, he continued to recommend £50 bottles of wine - a technique likely to embarrass those of a more shrinking violet disposition than ourselves.

The food - they describe it as 'classic renaissance' - is also retro in theme, some of it so recherch» it's almost tonguein-cheek. There are Wellingtons and bouillabaisses, daubes and thermidors - even crëpes Suzettes.

And the good news is that it's truly excellent, almost flawlessly realised; apart from a tendency for the food to arrive a little cold, the luxurious ingredients are deployed to sumptuous effect. My date, a gal not easily impressed, declared her starter - a cushiony raviolo of translucent pasta stuffed with veal and served 'Piemontese', typically with demi-glace and cheese - the best thing she'd ever eaten. My eggs in cocotte, crowned with mushrooms and chicken livers with Madeira was sticky, rich, comforting food.

Lobster Newburg, collops of yielding crustacean in a sauce lethal with cream, egg yolks, Marsala and brandy surrounding a nest of toothsome home-made linguine, made us wonder why - apart from the threat of imminent cardiac arrest - this kind of cooking ever fell from fashion. Sole Dieppoise - more butter, more creamy unctuousness, this time with prawns, mussels and an unnecessary tangle of blanched carrot julienne - disappointed its recipient slightly, but I put this down to the hard-act-to-follow syndrome.

This is stellar cooking in every sense of the word with, predictably, prices to match. And, for those who like that sort of thing, there's even the odd soapstar or two to take the classy look off the place. But then, what do they know? After all, they ate at Sugar Reef too.