Far from a masterpiece

At the end of last year, we went to Sketch, the extraordinary multi-layered enterprise in Mayfair. Like other reviewers, we concentrated on the Lecture Room, the 'fine-dining' arm of the operation. More column inches were afforded (ho ho) to the price (hovering round the £400 mark for two) than the cooking: multi-Michelin-starred coowner Pierre Gagnaire's particular form of eye-popping and tastebudjangling molecular gastronomy.

But Sketch is more than just the Lecture Room. Much more. There are two bars - the East bar, which looks like a collision between A Clockwork Orange's milk bar and the playroom of a disturbed child, and the West bar, a determined take on the glamour of the 1960s. There's a patisserie, the Parlour, where tiny, jewel-like cakes sit under glass and antique chandeliers lurk suggestively beneath plastic lampshades. And there's the Gallery which is, as the name suggests, a place to admire video art during the day but which transforms into a 'brasserie' as evening falls.

Like every other part of Sketch, it is visually stunning. Last visit, I didn't have space to talk about the stairs which appear to drip molten toffee and chocolate - or the incredible lavs studded with £35,000-worth of Swarovski crystals. These are for patrons of the upstairs Lecture Room only. To access them, you have to have a velvet rope parted for you by one of the staggeringly beautiful black greeters. She will also walk with you to the door, should you have an urgent desire to be made to look squat, badly dressed and truncated of limb. Then there are the other frankly bizarre lavs that, with their giant people-pods, make you feel you're about to be part of an unpleasant alien experiment.

But foodwise, the Gallery gives it style over content. Into a room where a symphony of whites creates a backdrop for, on our visit, a wall-sized video loop of someone mopping a floor, are crammed those who wish to see and be seen. I've never witnessed such a high model count - it was like a casting session for Mick Jagger's new arm candy. Hither and thither run staff (in contrast to the knowledgeable chaps in the Lecture Room, they seemed spectacularly clueless) wheeling trolleys of food. Little effort is made to welcome or cosset - you feel absolutely processed.

The food is like a blurry, muddied version of the elaborate goings-on upstairs. A choice of three from six cold starters really didn't get the juices going. Spanish charcuterie (good) came with strident, ketchuppy tomato 'marmalade' and flabby pochas beans. Small chunks of tiger prawn struggled against a cacophony of quinoa, mango with cumin and leeks.

Beef, chopped and topped with seaweed and formed into a tiny square with sea bream, herring and something called smoked potcher tartare was vile, a cube of flaccid, fishy meat. These had me speculating that this was why the models come here - they're not tempted to eat.

But pea soup with dried tuna was good. At £18, a starter of scallops with truffles and asparagus needed to be bloody gorgeous. It was pleasant, which was kind of not good enough. A generous lobe of seared foie gras (excellent) sat on a rather ignorant red cabbage and cos lettuce coleslaw (dull) and came with little dishes of thinly sliced duck magret (too sweet), stock-and-soy-cooked potatoes (salty, squidgy), walnuts and pressed fig (nasty).

Undeniably splendid were a box crammed with a selection of cheeses in mint condition - our waiter could not name any of them - and a glorious selection of home-baked breads: baguette, rustique, ciabatta. We paid, with drinks, £125 for two.

Throughout our meal, a DJ banged out dissonant bleeps and whoops. Behind us, ignored by the staff, was a diner who appeared to have passed out. Maybe she was a piece of performance art.

9 Conduit Street W1.Tel: 08707774488. Tube: Oxford Circus/Piccadilly Circus

The Glade at Sketch
9 Conduit Street, W1