Ladurée takes the biscuit

You don't have to be gay to have lunch at Ladurée, but it helps. As you enter the Harrods branch of the famous Parisian patisserie, the first thing you notice are row upon row of brightly coloured macaroons.

During Paris Fashion Week, apparently, no goodie bag is complete if it doesn't include at least half a dozen of these. Penetrate a little further, and you come across 'Le Salon Noir', which looks like an S&M dungeon designed by a wedding-cake manufacturer. Could this place be any more camp?

According to the manager, 60 per cent of Ladurée's revenue comes from retail sales - with the macaroons accounting for a whopping 50 per cent of this. Indeed, these little circular biscuits - half the size of normal macaroons - are so popular that the four Parisian branches of Ladurée sell 110 tons a year.

(And that's just to Karl Lagerfeld.) This particular branch, however, also has a restaurant, and I'm here to sample the lunch menu. So it's off to the mezzanine level - 'Le Salon Orange' - for me.

I have to confess, the first impression created by the restaurant isn't good. I'm tempted by the three-course set lunch for £29, but the waitress informs me that, of the three starter options, two aren't available, so unless I want a 'religieuse' of wild mushrooms and fromage frais I'm going to have to go off-piste.

My companion - a fellow restaurant critic - asks for a glass of champagne to accompany his starter of foie gras, but is told they've run out of blonde champagne and can only offer pink. ( Quelle surprise.)

He obligingly orders Sauternes instead, and is so saintly he doesn't even complain when they mistakenly bring him a glass of Muscat. 'At least it's white and sweet,' he says. By any measure, this is a very poor start.

Things perk up a bit when my starter of chicken and mushroom vol au vent arrives. There isn't an over-abundance of chicken, but the accompanying sauce is excellent, as are the morels.

For our main courses, my companion opts for scorpion fish - 'You usually only find that in bouillabaisse so I'm curious to see what it tastes like on its own' - and I choose the fillet of beef with potato and mozzarella croquettes. The fish passes muster, though its flavour is a little too gamey for my taste, and the beef is perfectly all right, if nothing special.

As you'd expect, it's when the puddings arrive that Ladurée really comes into its own. We begin by dividing a plate of assorted macaroons. I'm not a fan of almond essence, but these have been made with ground almonds, and the upshot is that they're much less marzipanny than usual, allowing the other flavours - passion fruit, salted butter caramel, pistachio - to dominate.