Grace Dent reviews The Keeper's House

I vividly remember really wanting to go to The Keeper’s House from the moment its name was announced. Restaurant names are important and this is a lovely, intriguing, playful one, conjuring up ideas of Johnny Morris cavorting with a baby elephant or The Tiger Who Came To Tea or Alberto Frog’s Amazing Animal band. Elegance and eccentricity.

The Keeper’s House appeared a few months ago in the corner of the Royal Academy’s elegant 18th-century courtyard, off Piccadilly. A fantastic spot, I imagined, to have up one’s sleeve for those moments when one needs to whisper "This is London" to out-of-towners. Whizz them round on the London Eye, let them gawp at Eros in a snowdome, then pull them into a twinkling Merchant Ivory setting, through a door marked by Tracey Emin artwork, plunging into a basement with green baize snooker table-style walls, strewn with architectural casts. "There you go!" you’d be yelling inwardly, you’re not in the Durham Café Rouge now, are you?’ Although it transpired I would rather be in Café Rouge than eat again in The Keeper’s House. If a restaurant is like an orchestra with a lot of people doing very important, different things brilliantly to make something wonderful happen, then The Keeper’s House is like listening to Les Dawson clank through Roll Out the Barrel.

After dutifully filling in my online booking form for dinner and being blanked entirely, I telephoned The Keeper’s House to request a table for two on Tuesday at 7.30pm. ‘Fully booked,’ I was informed. ‘OK, 8.30 then?’ I said. Somehow they fitted me in. I arrived to find the place almost deserted aside from a few couples and a table of three magnificently haughty Chelsea matriarchs sitting glowering at plates that should have been cleared away, wearing fur coats indoors, which at this juncture I thought was fabulously raffish until I realised they were simply bloody freezing. The place was ghost-townish. Weirdly, not a waiter in sight.

For the first ten minutes of waiting for one I stared at the ‘art’, which is ugly but, like a lost spit-covered toy rabbit perched on a wall, someone somewhere probably loves it. For the next ten minutes of waiting I became mutinous about the art, because if it was there to provide a distraction from the fact I had no menu, no water and no waiter, I’d rather have a lovely Beryl Cook. Maybe some fat ladies in a Jacuzzi drinking Asti Spumante. Something to fixate on.

The menu, when it did appear, was brief: six starters and six mains, although the most delicious-looking thing — lamb — was off, making it briefer still. A starter of cured mackerel, fennel, sea vegetables and pickled green tomato was a tiny plate of fish scattered with gritty sea bits that may as well have been from a carton of goldfish food. My friend’s starter was a handful of lukewarm chewy barley with a cold, translucent semi-poached egg and truffle. Not nice, not eaten. I enjoy it when people try to say I simply don’t understand food like this; the fact is I understand it all too bloody well. We sat with our dirty plates for a long time enjoying the fur-coat ladies finally going fully feral with crossness.

Then I was presented with my £26.50 piece of sirloin steak, which was as big as the palm of a child’s hand, and cut into three sections, with a scattering of pistachios. My side order hadn’t been registered. I had no steak knife. I asked for the bill and the steak knife. We snapped a picture of the baked dumplings in matured cheddar, which was a plate of cheese sauce with cheesy lumps and a sort of grass mixed through it, like when a cat has been trying to make itself ill. I paid the bill for £92, including £10 automatically added for service, and went to Flesh & Buns for dinner. Try the chicken yakitori. It’s delicious.