Going with the flow

The River Walk Restaurant, Bar & Grill isn't on the Oxo Tower's desirable penthouse location - that honour belongs to the eponymous gaff - but in fact, its less lofty setting means that you feel as though you're almost floating on water.

I remember a truly memorable fireworks display over the river viewed from the panoramic windows when the restaurant was in one of its previous incarnations. It's going to be a great place for Bonfire Night.

Perhaps it's the curious sensation of being on some kind of floating liner, perhaps it's the decadent, dusky lavender leather furniture (a hangover from the previous incumbent, the sadly short-lived Neat), perhaps it's the turbo-charged cocktails - the bartender mixed me a Dirty Martini complete with muddled olives without so much as a quizzical eyebrow - but there's a feeling of heady abandon both here (at the cheaper Grill; the Restaurant is more serious and more expensive) and in the circular bar. This seems like a sterling spot for a night out on the pull.

And pulling was most emphatically going on; there was the louche, hooded-eyed predator trawling a bar heaving with perfectly maquillaged totty for prey: weighing up putative bank balance versus bosom. And the gorgeous, over-refreshed creature who landed on our table, making eyes at my date while spooning dollops of our mashed potato into her carmined gob with her fingers (tragically, neither of us was quite the right gender to appreciate this innovative approach).

The pricing in the Grill is also perfect for its youngish, fashionable target clientele: starters are around £6, mains round about the £12 mark. And, considering that food seems to be pretty far down the denizens' list of priorities, it's somewhat better than it needs to be. Given the pedigree of its protagonists - chef Richard Sawyer has done time at the likes of Admiralty and the Connaught; manager Marc Whitley spent eight years upstairs at the Oxo - I guess that's to be expected.

A truffled (from oil) veloutè of Jerusalem artichokes was a sinfully rich bowlful: dense, deeply creamy; luxurious enough to deflect your attention from the inevitably flatulent side effects of this prankster tuber. It came with shortbread of pancetta and pecorino; a great idea which needs to be 'shorter' to truly justify its title. A mound of Cornish crab was bound with avocado and topped with perky pink prawns; with its accompanying salad of pencil asparagus and green beans, it was a fresh, pleasing dish. Roast freerange chicken, rather pallid and anaemic-looking but with a surprising intensity of flavour, came with a soothing, nutmeg-scented bread sauce; a massive, breaded veal schnitzel sat on a bed of the riceshaped pasta, orzo, that's fed to babies in Italy. Its whiff of saffron didn't make it a whole lot more grown up; nor did the 'confit' red pepper - a sauce, actually - do a great deal to alleviate an encroaching sense of intense boredom. One of those ubiquitous chocolate fondant puddings was badly executed: the dry exterior and not-molten-enough inside evidence of inattention to timings.

What we ate was mostly pleasant, but on the unchallenging side: with its creaminess and pureeing and processing and breadcrumbing it was like up-market children's food. The aforementioned mashed potato was the perfect example: whipped, laden with butter and cream, enriched on the one hand with sticky cheese and pancetta, on the other with caramelised onions and pine nuts. It was as though chewing is too much to ask of diners whose attention is more than likely to be engaged elsewhere. And, of course, there are those flawless lip-lines to consider.

River Walk Restaurant, Bar & Grill, 2nd Floor, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street SE1. Tel: 020 7928 2864. Tube: Waterloo

River Walk Grill
Second Floor, Oxo Tower, Barge House Street, SE1 9PH