Is it weird or what?

I am a huge fan of Mourad Mazouz. He is a true original - a wiry, intense man with the tortured look of some kind of genius. Though he's probably beautifully sane and well-adjusted, I always imagine him in a divine but lonely apartment, chewing his fingers to the bone, fevered ideas jostling for space in his crowded brain.

His grande folie, Sketch, took forever to arrive, swallowing a reputed £12 million in the process. When it finally opened its doors, jaded London gave a collective gasp. That design! Those loos! Those prices!

Some of it worked - despite critical butchering, I reckon the notoriously priced Library and Lecture Room is worth mugging your granny for. But some of it didn't - our meal in the Gallery was a hilarious pantomime of jittery projected images, suspiciously unhungry pseudo-celebs and bad food.

But it would seem that Sketch is a work in progress, a constantly mutating beast. The Parlour, a rather debauched patisserie, has become more of a bar, and what was formerly the West Bar has shape-shifted into The Glade, a lunchtime-only restaurant serving a diffusion version of the intricate, playful food of legendary executive chef Pierre Gagnaire (although since he's rarely manning the coalface, I reckon consultant is a more accurate title).

Knowing the tricks that the Sketch design plays on its punters, I took a pal who makes animations. Cartoons. I knew she would love it because it's a little like a dark children's fantasy (though I do think the place would work better at night).

There is the most astonishing light fitting, a massive, writhing explosion of spiky branches that looks set to snake down and snare your limbs while you eat. The carpet resembles a child's drawing of grass.

Bleepy, dreamy music sounds like The Clangers on dirty martinis. But the bar's previous elements - wall coverings and gently rotating satellite-dish-like mirrors - remain. Does this suggest a touch of penny-pinching?

The menu is alarmingly complex and appropriately cartoonish: eggs with sultanas, fish with liquorice, caramelised sardines. You stare and stare, wondering what the heck you want to put in your mouth. There's also the worry that whoever is stepping into Gagnaire's size 12s doesn't stand a chance of pulling off this level of complexity. The worry is justified.

Cuttlefish and mussels. And ginger, tomato, tamarillo, beetroot, hake cream and green apple. This looked like a Chris Ofili painting - kaleidoscope mosaics and dots of this and that - and tasted sharply pleasant.

But it had clearly been plated some time ago and stored in a fridge. My onion tartlet turned out to be an insubstantial vol-au-vent stuffed with toffeed button onions and a sneeze of astringent squirty cream.