Gastro that's so so

Another day, another gastropub. Look, I'm all for offering good food at reasonable prices but does it always, always have to come in the context of some tarted up old boozer nowadays? Why can't we do it in a regular restaurant environment without someone swilling bitter and chain-smoking at the next table?

The concept was ground-breaking in its day, but news of another of these ubiquitous beasties runs the risk of boring me into a rigid torpor. OK, I'm calm now, rant's over.

So to the Abbeville. It's all very nice, really. Pub-like - if a little sanitised; staffed and populated by young, shiny Claphamites (on the staff side, they could do with a touch less cool-dudedom and a little more snap-to-it); there's a short menu featuring a bunch of stuff you're probably going to want to eat.

So why do I find it so enervating? Because it's all looking a bit same old, same old, that's why. This offering, brought to us by the people behind Lavender Hill's Cinnamon Cay, is so formulaic it could have been dreamed up by a drone of marketing men.

What we ate was perfectly fine: but then it was hardly a complicated job to whip up a plate of cold meat and olives - good charcuterie, fine olives - or to sear a rib-eye steak.

Even the more complicated dishes, such as my date's sea bass with roast fennel, capers and anchovies, are little more than assemblies of - admittedly good - ingredients. We could have had smoked haddock tagliatelle, or the ubiquitous lamb shank with mashed potato and 'jus', or... well, you could probably take a stab at the rest.

Prices are pubbish: fiver for starters, £8 to £9 for mains. To be absolutely fair, if I had this at the end of my road, I might be tempted to use it instead of the local takeaway but, as the French guides probably don't say, ne vaut pas le detour.