Full-up at the Inn

Oliver Peyton is now into his second year of dealing with the vagaries of aspirational catering at Inn The Park in St James's Park.

Not only are there the staffing problems of one day maybe having 20 people dining and the next day 500, but Peyton is dedicated proudly to buying ingredients from small suppliers around the British Isles.

They can't always deliver consistent quantities of produce. A section on the menu is devoted to crustacea and their display on ice at the head of the self-service side of the operation is just one of the unexpected pleasures of this ambitious, stylish undertaking. Home-made patisserie is another.

I tried lunch with two small children in tow and dinner for two one evening. Although bookings are taken, I didn't make one for lunch. We were given what I think was the last table available and a high chair was brought unasked.

The menu has a children's section and Maya, aged one-and-a-half, happily ate the pieces of grilled fish that were described as fish fingers but not the accompanying cucumber salad. An older child might well have loudly lamented the missing breadcrumbs. Jacob, the older child with us, appreciated the chips and also the excellent herby sausages that I persuaded the waiter to smuggle in from the self-service section.

Beth, my adult companion, thought the menu a bit hefty for lunchtime. It is indeed better suited to evenings when one is more in the mood - Reg and I were - for items like slow-cooked Welsh pork belly with honey and spinach, and oven-roasted Devonshire Bronze chicken breast with carrot purée and watercress.

Beth chose Inn the Park Ploughman's, which features a home-made under-seasoned pie. I had Dorset crab with mayonnaise on toast, which was very good, but not a lot of it for £12.

No chocolate flavour among the icecreams (vanilla, caramel, strawberry, pineapple) meant we were out all the sooner to feed our bread to the ducks on the pond.

Architect Michael Hopkins was lunching near us. His practice has just won a prize - quite rightly - for the design of Inn the Park. Handsome Curtis Stone - copresenter with Ben O'Donoghue, chef of Peyton's Atlantic Bar & Grill, of TV series Surfing the Menu - was filling in the gap left by Inn the Park chef Mark Bradbury being taken suddenly ill. Catering doesn't run smoothly.