Make a sundae of Sunday

Do Sunday drink or not? It's a tricky one, the great summer dilemma. A hangover is a horrible start to the week, but its antecedent, a Sunday spent drinking in the sunshine, is a sure-fire way to wring maximum fun from the weekend.

Since the sky turned blue, my Monday-morning e-mail in-box is stuffed with mournful, head-clasping missives from friends who have moped into work with hangovers - 'I got carried away yesterday by the whole summer vibe.'

One of my favourite Sunday-drinking spots last summer was The Metropolitan on Great Western Road. It's a royal spot for that classic urban pastime (and our true equivalent of the Parisian brasserie), pavement drinking. They have a big - if not green, then certainly beer-garden.

On Sundays it gets so busy that I've always made the kerbstone my barstool. They go all out to make a night of it - bringing in proper DJs, getting one of those oil-drum barbeques on the go, which adds the smell of jerk chicken and smouldering coals to the euphoric summer melee. They get some big names in - the Cuban Brothers, various Wall Of Sound DJs, the Dub Pistols, the Freestylers - probably not cutting-edge by the standards of London's fashionable East Enders, but out West we've been somewhat deprived of down-and-dirty fun since the bankers moved in and all the fun-loving lazy people had to move out.

The Metropolitan is nothing different to look at, its decor is on the edgy side of gastropub norm - stripped floors, dark walls, wooden furniture. This April they opened a dining room upstairs, which is open Thursday through Sunday (though seven days a week there is more standard gastropub grub available in the downstairs bar).

We were seated on the terrace - with just six tables, this is a hot ticket for summer dinners. The dining room inside looked mellow, with heavy velvet drapes and a thick gloss on the floorboards to muffle the clatter.

I took art student Ben, who has yet to get a decent meal in a gastropub out of me (he's getting a bit pissed off). This time, though, things looked promising. The waiter was bright, friendly, confident - a recently graduated student who knew a bit about wine, he helped us find a red that would comfortably fit round both our starters and mains. No doubt, he'll go off and become an ad director or something, leaving the world one good waiter poorer, but he did us good that night.

It was a proper balmy evening, like you get on foreign holidays, and the menu was exotic - miso soup with mussels, carpaccio of bison. We felt as if we were in Sydney or Cape Town - so far, not bad for an overgrown window-ledge above a boozer.

The bread came - it was cakey and un-yeasty but, with its oven warmth, had appealing soulfulness. Ben's fois gras terrine with wild mushrooms was large and solid, a bit buttery and sickly and not the finest fois gras dish I have ever tasted, but smeared on to the nutty toast, with a dollop of the sultana and apple puree, it had spot-hitting qualities.

Millefeuille of smoked sturgeon and rainbow caviar was different-coloured, cheap, jolly fish eggs, layered with (not-sour-enough-sour cream and leaves of slightly pallid, curmudgeonly pastry. This dish is a nice idea - fun - but needs refining.