Keeping up with the Joneses

As a locale, SW12 is moving up the social scale so fast that you half expect to see an outbreak of nosebleeds and to hear urgent calls for oxygen and sherpas.

The pubs are being refurbished so that they look like bars, the supermarkets are going chic and even the local Boots is getting a face-lift. Perhaps it is all a response to the Balham Kitchen & Bar?

The name may be prosaic, but this place is part of the Soho House group. We are talking svelte members' club in Soho, Babington House in Somerset and Soho House in New York - somewhere so blisteringly trendy that it featured on Sex And The City. Soho, New York, Balham - it is getting harder to predict where the fickle finger of fashion will point next.

The Balham Kitchen is a large bar, but the size doesn't make the slightest difference, as even midweek the place is packed with a spectrum of punters that goes all the way from codgers to city boys by way of elegant teams on a girls' night out. The menu is carefully constructed to deliver an informal brasserie feel, but with enough twists and wrinkles to banish boredom.

The starter section goes from watercress soup, moules marinières, asparagus served with quails eggs and Hollandaise, to hand-carved Serrano ham from a joint clamped in a stand on the bar.

Then there's a seafood section, which canters from oysters to dressed crab and grilled lobster and chips. There's a 'small plates' section featuring a skewer of black pudding and cheese, or perhaps a plate of crispy squid appeals? Then there's 'salad and sandwiches', which offers a decent cheeseburger and a well-made Caesar salad, which is unfussy and dressed with a cold softboiled egg - very classical.

Main courses flirt with retro - chicken Kiev, smoked haddock with a rarebit crust - and are all comfortingly familiar. A grilled rib-eye steak is served with well made Béarnaise sauce and chips. A duck pot pie with broad beans is wholly successful, the duck leg sticks up through the pastry crust and there's a decent gravy.

The chips are good, plentiful and delivered in a small bucket. The wine list is rather shaded by the array of cocktails, but carries on manfully. Service is very crisp, dishes arrive quickly, everyone is friendly and front of house manages the difficulties arising from a dining room that is rammed full most of the time with tact and charm.

Worldly-wise folk will note similarities between the Balham Kitchen and hot ticket Brasserie Balthazar in New York - same napkins, same chip buckets, pretty similar menu. What is impressive is that the Balham Kitchen should be nearly as busy as one of New York's finest.