Just a pretty face

Ignore the stars - they're a copout. Because here we have, yet again, a restaurant that does a whole lot cleverly, beautifully right. And just about the same quite profoundly wrong.

I am losing count of the number of times I've written something along the lines of: 'beautiful place, shame about the food.' Veeraswamy, Yakitoria, Cocoon, Asia de Cuba, Annex 3 - it's the capital disease. But we punters continue to beat a path to these doors: it's a worrisome demonstration of where our priorities lie.

Anyway. Village East. Gorgeous. But you guessed that, didn't you? As the name suggests, there's a bit of a downtown Noo Yoik vibe about the place with its bare brick beauty in the rapidly gentrifying streets of Bermondsey. Set out on several levels round the focal point of a kitchen so open they call it a 'theatre kitchen', it really does thrill.

Tardis-like, it's much, much bigger than you'd think from the street front. Industrial materials create an edgy, contemporary feel, softened by ravishing, opulent glass light fittings just tucked out of centre stage.

Already, it's full of good-looking, so-trendy youngish people - staff and diners. This part of the world is chocka with fiendishly fashionable little businesses and, despite the place only having been open for minutes, their denizens have already gravitated here, recognising a natural stomping ground in one of Malcolm Gladwell's blinks.

The menu, printed on a paper place mat with a map of a mythical world on the reverse - dotted with names such as Ringworm, Niceplace Foryour Holidays, Millievanille, Plop - is also gorgeous. It's a clever, comehither mix of steak-frites standards and latter-day fancy-pantsiness.

So you get deep-fried soft-shell crabs with watermelon and wasabi sauce; or asparagus 'Milanese' with brown butter, Gruyere and quails eggs. And for sharing, Chateaubriand with green beans and bearnaise sauce; or roast suckling pig, roasted onions, apples and sausages and Parmesan sauce. (Parmesan sauce? Hmm...)

But, like undressing somebody beautiful to find home-made tattoos and bad underwear, the actual eating proved to be a deflating disappointment. Order a courgette flower in Italy and you get a fat flower, delicately robed in the lightest batter and stuffed with a subtle, creamy ricotta filling.

Here, masquerading as a 'beignet', it arrived looking like a frozen potato croquette, vigorously deep-fried and tasting only of its cooking oil. Red pepper juice and shiso cress came, too. Apparently. It was teeny-tiny and cost £6.50.

Better were sautèed butternut squash gnocchi ('May I have a small portion as a starter?' I asked. 'No,' our waitress admonished, 'is impossible.' I persevered and got them). Nutty, soaked with butter, only vaguely tasting of the promised black truffle, they were enjoyable little nubs of carb. And, yes, it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it portion.