Looks can deceive

I review restaurants. I'm not a food critic: that sort of behaviour's best left to those far more steeped in foodie navel-gazing than I'd ever care to be. So I reserve the right thoroughly to enjoy Number 10 despite the fact that what we ate was, well, pretty duff, actually.

The place is great, one of those purpose-built Edwardian gin palaces. Now it's a primrose-painted anomaly in an area dominated by the brutalism of Goldfinger's Trellick Tower.

It's billed as a live music venue - bar, restaurant and members' bar - so I fretted. I dread places where cacophony drowns out conversation and the studied cool of the clientele makes you feel like Thatcher's stuffier sibling. And the bar checks all the signifiers: 1950s-style, curved granite bar; mismatched, sittingroom furniture; vividly coloured photography of post-war holiday camps; the requisite attractive punters in boho lounging gear. But despite door gorillas, it feels welcoming, not faux-exclusive. And the combination of a frosty vat-full of vodka martini and no sign of the dreaded DJ station let me sink into the experience.

Upstairs, the restaurant is lovely. With its linens, pale colours, twinkly 1950s chandeliers and so-now fakeflock wallpaper, it's very Elle Deco. Staff are bright and attractive, stylish in their long dark aprons with striking white motifs. Big windows look out on to imposing concrete. I'd swear we were the only table in the place not peopled by architects come to worship at the shrine of Goldfinger: men were in black polos with short-shorn silver scalps or wacky headgear, women in dramatic sculptural black with slashes of red lippy.

Very chic, very urban. In a corner, a lone violinist sawed out a pleasantly melancholy refrain.

So, sadly, to the food. The menu, from one Julien Maisonneuve, who has apparently done stints at Michelin-starred French gaffs, reads well: appealing and witty, like my Scotch quail's eggs with sun-dried tomatoes and home-made salad cream. This was probably the best dish we tried: it made us smile and, with its quality sausage meat, subtle little hard-boiled eggs and clever accompaniments, tasted good too. Sadly, this was an isolated incident. Double-baked blue cheese soufflè had suffered from the process. This was no light, fluffy soufflè - it was a provincial cheese scone. Spiced pears were too sweet to reduce the damage.

A solid piece of sea bream was fresh and fine, its aubergine 'caviar' arriving as three ignorant dollops of grey matter, rapidly abandoned by my aubergine-loving date.

What was announced with some fanfare as Number 10 cassoulet served with confit duck leg, Cumberland sausage and Gloucester Old Spot roasted pork belly, was just grim. I should have paid more attention to the syntax, it might have prepared me for what arrived. This was no cassoulet, where components marry through long, slow cooking; this lot had speed-dated moments before serving and, by the looks of things, weren't getting on at all well.

The sausage was dry, the duck tasted bizarrely like salt cod, the pork belly was all rubbery fat and unyielding crackling and the beans hard little bullets doused in garlicky tomatoes, not even worthy of a Heinz tin.

Cheese, served on a campy, cute little cake stand, tasted like a supermarket special; bread and butter pudding was cold and stodgy.

And still I liked the place. Go figure. It had an early Portobello Road, First Floor electricity. Someone who really loves food should beat Julien about the head and tell him to get his finger out, because I'm sure he can do better. And the place deserves it.