Foodie for thought

If ever there were a restaurant for fervent foodies, Arbutus is it.

I hang out on a number of online foodie forums (sorry for the repetition of the f-word but there is no other name for these obsessives: gourmet suggests a discriminating delicacy, gourmand a greediness - your foodie is the bastard child of the two). These forums serve the kind of hardcore punter unable to get their kicks from mere paperbased routes.

They want to snuffle in every little detail of others' dinners, they want ingredients dissected and splayed for their arousal under arc lighting, cooking techniques rewound and replayed in slo-mo. Among these people, Arbutus has been getting an unprecedented froth of coverage. So what's turning them on?

Well, check the credentials: chef and co-owner (with Will Smith - no, not that one) Anthony Demetre trails a Michelin Star, won at Putney Bridge, in his wake. The menu is littered with f-word faves: ingredients such as offal, smoked eel and goats' curd; terms such as 'cromesquis' (croquette) and 'sotl'ylaisse' (the chicken 'oyster', which translates as 'only a fool would leave it'); so-now veg such as hispi cabbage, sea purslane and cavolo nero. More than 80 wine bins are available by the 250ml carafe.

And it's almost monastic in its eschewal of designery folderols - or, indeed, any kind of exuberance. A true f-word doesn't give an organic Tuscan fig for such trivialities. It is done out in monochromes, brightly lit and corridor-like, all hard-edges and yah-boo-sucks to soft furnishing. This is the sort of place that would have the Trois GarÃons boys choking into their mojitos.

There is no doubt that Demetre is a seriously talented dude. He has stripped his menu from its excitable, haute-y Putney Bridge days to something that resembles, yet again, Paris's Bistro Moderne movement.

These premises represent a bit of a homecoming - Demetre worked here years ago under Bruno Loubet when it was Bistro Bruno. Some of his dishes read like homages to those days (soupe au pistou with ProvenÃal olive oil); some have been transported from his starry days south of the river (an elaborate take on floating islands).

Now I like a bit of design. But the food here is good enough to make me choke on my shallowness. And, for cooking of this quality, it's fabulously reasonably priced: starters around the £6 to £7 mark, mains about £14, with a three-course set lunch for £15.

Take the chicken 'sot-l'y-laisse', for instance. Little nuggets of chicken from somewhere in the region of the bird's oxter, oystershaped and packed with flavour, in a light cream sauce laced with lemon thyme and hazelnuts. And macaroni. A superb dish made with cheap ingredients. Or mackerel and squid 'burger' - a tricksy confection that comes off thanks to some inspired spicing (star anise in its 'barbecue sauce') and the quality of the ingredients.

Saddle of rabbit came wrapped in ham, with a little flavour bomb of its own kidney, but its accompanying 'cottage pie' - sinfully smooth potato, the sweetness of carrot and strips of shoulder braised into squidginess - stole the show.

And that floating island (more like a sea-fort) was a preternaturally light puck of meringue in flawless crËme anglaise. Why were its pralines pink? 'Because they come that way.' Thanks for clearing that up for us.

I wonder if Arbutus will have enough of the chichi to appeal to the native Soho media-ocracy. As a business lunch venue, it can hardly be bettered but maybe it lacks the sybaritic quality to pull them in at night. Never mind, it will still be filled with pale, plump punters, trembling with anticipation as they caress the frequently changing menu. The London foodie has a new spiritual home.