Lounging in style

Gordon Ramsay could probably launch a business in a public convenience and it would immediately fill up with devotees of the hard man's culinary style. But despite this popularity, Ramsay is a prodigious champion of new, young talent - evidenced by the success of Angela Hartnett, Mark Sargeant and Marcus Wareing.

Ramsay's company, Gordon Ramsay Holdings, is now backing another new talent in the form of Ian Pengelly who, although he didn't train under Ramsay, is fast becoming recognised as another leading light on the London hospitality circuit following a long stretch at E&O in Notting Hill.

Whether it's Ramsay's backing or Pengelley's cooking, the spacious first-floor restaurant was more than half full when I visited on a Wednesday evening, despite this being during the early days of operation.

To get to the second-floor bar I had the not insignificant ordeal of the clipboard Nazi to contend with. She didn't like the cut of my jib - her brief is probably to keep out the Sloane Street riff-raff - but acquiesced when I convinced her I knew there was a lounge bar lurking somewhere.

The bar wasn't busy when I walked in, but soon filled up with second-division Eurotrash and a particularly odd gathering of women who looked like they might be East European drag queens. Extremely low-slung furniture is arranged in small, cosy clusters, but there were great swathes of empty spaces 'waiting for more furniture to arrive', as the manager later explained.

I reckon the waitresses were also waiting for their uniforms to arrive: the poor lambs were trussed up in frumpy black frocks that looked like they'd just been run up by a blind seamstress on a broken sewing machine. Still, they managed to smile through this ignominy.

The cocktail list includes six different Bloody Marys (one decent one would have sufficed), and is then divided into 'punches and slings' and 'luxury classics and twists' categories, and are optimistically priced at between £8 and £10 a go. A Rumbullion (Havana Club seven-year-old rum, cinnamon, vanilla and orange zest) tasted like a poor man's Old Fashioned.

I avoided the rest of the cocktails as many of them are made with Ciroc vodka (a new drink distilled from grapes and unchallenging on the palate), or contained an unnecessarily complicated blend of rioting flavours. The wine list includes just five whites and four reds, all available by the glass.

The eponymous Pengelley was working the lounge bar and appeared to be enjoying his new-found celebrity. Had he deigned to speak to me, I would have told him that his dim sum menu (duck spring rolls, chilli salt squid, crispy prawn katafi) was exciting enough to entice me back to try the full monty in the restaurant. As for the bar? Well, no. Think I'll give this place a miss next time I'm shopping on Sloane Street.

Pengelley's
164 Sloane Street, SW1