Just perfect for Balham

The cackle of a dozen hen nights hits you as you step into the Balham Kitchen & Bar, the latest addition to wonder boy Nick Jones's roster of trendy places to eat chips. These are served here in a chic tin can lined with greaseproof paper, dark brown and very salty.

You stand there, slightly bewildered, at the roar and the crush. It's almost as crowded as his caff in W11, the Electric Brasserie. That place is so hot that the Portobello pavement outside is jammed with hopefuls waiting for tables, who stand gawping at all the 'slebs' swiping themselves in with club-cards at an unmarked door, disappearing to the members-only Electric above.

But hold on, you have to remind yourself, this is Balham - gateway to the South! Just up the road from fashionable Tooting! Can Balham - dare we even ask - be the new Notting Hill?

Well, we'll come to that. Inside, there are wall-mounted plasma screens flickering, showing the footie, which I thought quite boysy given what a hot-date place this is. It's huge and openplan, all very busy-busy, with chefs chopping and garnishing and assembling. Masses of good-looking party people are standing up and shouting or sitting down at tables and shouting. A pencil-slim, black hostess - I am channelling Halle Berry with a touch of Iman - finally sashays to where I am standing, feeling just a soupçon frumpy and sorry for my lonesome self.

Black Venus takes me on a circuit through the crowd to a table for two where my guest, Stephanie Calman, founder of the Bad Mothers' Club, is waiting. The club is a website devoted to making harassed mothers feel less inadequate about feeding their children a diet consisting primarily of chocolate money. 'I've got a bad back,' shouts Bad Mother, 'so I've pinched the banquette.' (And the view of the room.) I tell Bad Mother that she will have to be my eyes and ears then. 'I can't hear you,' shouts Bad Mother. 'That table' - she points rudely to the hen party adjacent - 'is being incredibly noisy.'

The hen party moves in a huff, and we quickly get in our food order (there have been murmurs about the service). I always order squid as I have become addicted to the chilli squid at E&O, and I asked my companion to choose the wine. Bad Mother wanted to try the Sancerre at £32. 'It had better be nice,' I said in a tight voice.

Although our first course came in an appealing wooden canoe, the squid rounds were greasy and flabby, and the batter had no bite. The couple next to us had pink slices of beef also served on a wooden dish, which was set on a sort of tripod between them like a great meaty platter of fruits de mer. I liked this touch, as I liked the mirrored tables and chunky metal cruets, but I always have a wooden-loo-seat twinge about eating off wood. How clean is it, I want to know?

Moving right on... Our main courses were grand. Even though Bad Mother claimed not to be a 'crabby kind of person', she wolfed down her halibut with crab and spring greens. My skate was fine, if rather unfleshy, but nicely punched up with capers and a scoop of pesto.

By this stage we had polished off the Sancerre, so as a toast to Bad Mothers everywhere we ordered a carafe of house white to wash down our puds (we only managed three between us): ice cream, a zesty lime, mango and ginger tart, and profiteroles filled with cream that could have come from an aerosol and coated in chocolate that could have come from a squeezy bottle.

Meanwhile, the place throbbed away and I thought that the locals were jolly fortunate to have caught the eye of Nick Jones, because BKB is probably exactly the sort of thrusting, urban, metallic place that Balham needs.