Fish with a sting in the tail

Do you know about the hype cycle? You should, since it rules a great deal of modern life. First, something is announced as excitingly marvellous, as sure to take over the world. (The internet: biggest agent of change since the industrial revolution!)

Then, it is announced that the thing that was going to be great is actually useless, and a huge disappointment. (The internet: CB radio, except with porn, spam and credit card fraud!)

And then there is the third phase, during which much of what was promised in the first phase actually happens, but nobody notices, because the hype cycle has moved on to a new subject. (The internet: I never use it, except to do all my shopping.)

London restaurants are a classic example of the hype cycle at work. Ten years ago, when I stopped working as a restaurant critic, there were just the initial glimmerings of the first, over-excited phase. By about 2000 or so, it was difficult to go out of the house or open a newspaper without somebody telling you that London was now "the restaurant capital of the world".

And then the second part of the hype cycle kicked in, and Londoners began to notice two things in particular about this brave new world.

First, we were paying a lot for it: it sometimes seems that prices here are the same as prices abroad, only with a pound sign instead of a dollar or euro.

Second, all the great places you kept hearing about were increasingly difficult to get into. To book a table you had to call three months in advance and work through an automated phone system, an agreement to an inconvenient time slot, a major dose of attitude and a not-all-that-polite confirmatory call on the day of the booking. It sometimes seemed that the only thing missing was a police interview under caution.

Now, though, I'm starting to wonder if London is moving on to the next phase, in which a significant raising of the general standard of cooking is accompanied by - well, by nothing much, except a significant raising of the general standard of eating.

Take Umu, for instance. This is a hypertrendy new restaurant in Mayfair, owned by the same people who are behind The Greenhouse Restaurant and Morton's club. They seem to have taken a look at the success of places like Nobu, Zuma and Roka and thought: we can do that.

But Umu is unlike those places in one crucial respect: it isn't a fashionable East-West "fusion" hybrid. Instead, it specialises in the cuisine of Kyoto, a style of cooking where the emphasis is on balance, restraint, and a kind of luxurious austerity. In other words, it's more grown-up.