Making the right noises

Chef as dreamboat is not a wholly satisfactory concept. A man in a uniform is held to be an attractive sight and chefs can look dashing in their whites, but if they are dedicated chaps they have to slave away all day and all night in a kitchen. Except, of course, when they escape to television.

Ben O'Donoghue, chef of The Atlantic & Grill, has presented the BBC2 cookery show The Best. With fellow Aussie chef Curtis Stone, he has recently completed another series called Surfing the Menu, which will be shown on the UK Food programme at the end of this month. This will play to the strengths of cooking in the land of Oz, with the benefit and backdrop of sea, sun, surf and dazzlingly fresh shellfish.

The two handsome young chaps will be shown wrestling with nature red in tooth and claw, barbecuing on the beach, opening oysters with their teeth, that sort of thing. For British-born, Australian-bred O'Donoghue, it will demonstrate a dramatic contrast to his current London job - a trajectory from Atlantic basement to Pacific rim.

When Oliver Peyton opened The Atlantic Bar & Grill in 1994, it was a phenomenon, a huge Art-Deco space in the bowels of The Regent Palace Hotel where, without having to b e a member of a club, you could eat and drink until the early hours of the morning. People rejoiced, queues formed and Marco Pierre White opened The Titanic (now scuppered) above it.

Ten years on, there were no queues at 9pm on a Friday and the two burly door executives smiled benignly as we walked past them. At the bottom of a long staircase - papered in a floral pattern that your granny might choose for her bedroom - there are bars, including one named in homage to renowned mixologist Dick Bradsell, and the 180-seater restaurant fronted by a DJ console and another bar where music pounds.

Asking to sit as far away as possible from the music, we were led to a still noisy Siberia at the back, seemingly unassigned to any waiting staff. After a wait that seemed as long as one day in his life must have seemed to Ivan Denisovich, we attracted someone by dint of a spot of synchronised waving. The thump of house music was so loud that he came back with a drinks order quite different to the one we thought we had given. However, it was an opportunity to order some food.

The menu is a tempting read. O'Donoghue has moved onwards and outwards since his stint at Monte's, where he was under the influence of Jamie Oliver and their joint River Cafe training. Atlantic chowder had fish stocks more bountiful than are probably left in that ocean and a creamy, nubbly texture. Warm salad of ham hocks was warmer in the well-dressed accompanying potato salad than in the meat itself but was a well-judged match. Crispy duck salad with blood orange and five-spice would have been better had the duck been shredded from a roasted piece - as is implied - rather than cut in thick slices from a magret with a cinder crust of spices. A few salad leaves and pieces of citrus flesh sat around disconsolately.

One section of the main course is devoted to Scottish Buccleuch beef served as poached fillet, grilled steak or roasted cote de boeuf for two. The rare sirloin steak was champion as were the home-fries, which had the contrast of crunch and softness that Heston Blumenthal pioneered with his thrice-frying method. Fillet of cod poached in milk with basil, lemon and slow-cooked leeks was perfect invalid (or hangover) food - a gentle, subtle assembly. Spaghetti with prawns, organic zucchini and peperoncini was a wonderfully gutsy, oily, rich tangle.

Tired of shouting and heads aching from the mindless music, we left without trying any desserts. I might have chosen apricot soufflé with apricot and soured cream ice-cream - if I could have found anyone to ask.