Gun fires off to great start

It's fashionable for food to be seasonal at the moment, as is awareness of its provenance - at John Torode's Smith's Of Smithfield, they get Parky in to interview your steak before it is cooked for you. This is silly because food has always been seasonal, it's just that we forgot this for a couple of decades, what with the year-round Peruvian and Spanish asparagus and the perma-apples from New Zealand. God, stop me before I get all self-righteous with my 'Blah blah, supermarkets are evil, blah blah, I only buy organic, blah, blah, love the grouse, daaahling, is it from Lidgates?'

Of course, I picked up this seasonal-food-is-best thing because I am a pretentious twit, and then I realised that all the knowledge of the seasons was already there in a less fashion-conscious me with memories of my childhood eating. Shaking the earth from the first new potatoes with my grandfather in spring. Stealing peas from the pod and berries from the fruit cage in summer. September's a particularly Proustian time for me. I have strong memories of the agonies of back to school mixed with sweet endofseason tomatoes from the greenhouse. It was the easiest time to drag us out for walks as kids because we could eat from the hedgerows and come home with black stains on our faces. It's also the start of the apple season - we have many delicious apples in the UK, and it's worth truffling out a greengrocer who recognises this.

Two of my local restaurants, Kensington Place and Notting Hill Brasserie, are sensational at seasonal --you start to notice this when so many other places offer French beans 24/7, 365, and not much else in the way of veg. Despite their season being late spring to early autumn, I'm beginning to see French beans as permanent side-order as the sign of a not very good restaurant.

The Gun is a very good restaurant, sorry, gastropub. Tom and Ed Martin, of The White Swan (Fetter Lane) and The Well (St John Street), own it. The Martin brothers are up there in the Gastro Premier League. This time they have turned around a fire-damaged historic pub in London's Docklands, once Nelson's local, where he used to meet Emma Hamilton for private dinners - hence the ladies' has Emma on the door and the gents' Horatio. They have restored the pub beautifully, retaining the feeling of the old place without recourse to any repro or fake-antique tomfoolery.

My family is getting bored of reviewing with me, and I have to resort to forcing complete strangers to dine with me. I went to The Gun for lunch on a bizarre sort of blind date with a man who had contacted me through eBay and Popbitch. It was a funny sort of urban adventure. My friend Sam said I was mad. I asked whether he had a lunchtime free this week. No, he said.

My escort and I sat on a tranquil deck overlooking the Dome, watching sea cadets chug by in put-put boats.

I started with a high and gamey potted duck with soft green peppercorns and apricot in it - sage brioche was the perfect, strongflavoured accompaniment. The Stranger had whitebait, cooked very dry and sprinkled with paprika. Both of us were satisfied. Our main courses were the sweet symmetry of a Barnsley chop for him, which came rather rare with a roastgarlic mash that had the richness of pommes aligot. Oooh, it was all so good.

All the bits on the side were good: nice staff, three types of fresh, beautifully baked bread, which came with a rocket pesto and a garlicky hummus. Our straw chips came with home-made ketchup and aioli. The spinach side was garnished with nutmeg and butter. The menu is well balanced, the ingredients are fine. I heard that the chef's uncle works at Billingsgate and always throws him in the direction of the day's star catch when he looks in before work. There were pertinent little

My poached guinea fowl, with sautéed foie gras and vegetable broth, was perfect in every way, down to the fresh and tasty vegetables in the broth. However, the broth was underseasoned, tasting more of water than other things and the one bummer in an otherwise perfect meal.

We shared a posh, chefy tower of a pudding, a bitterchocolate sorbet with a bright, egg-yolk-yellow mango ice cream perched on top of rum-and-raisin parfait with two radical pillars of oven-dried banana, all artfully arranged.