Near the top of the tree

You'd have a lot of fun - were you into that kind of behaviour - creating a family tree for Great Queen Street.

A lush thing it would be, with branches ending at some of the most luminous names in the London dining scene: the inevitably-described-as-seminal Eagle in Farringdon, the unbookable and mobbed Anchor & Hope and the illustrious St John. And if you're a trend-watcher, you should be able to form a reasonable picture of what you're likely to expect here, just from its antecedents.

The team that links these establishments - Tom Norrington-Davies, Robert Shaw, Jonathan Jones and Michael Belben - make sure their attractive offspring bear several unmistakable stamps.

Butch food, heartily British, is a given; in particular, a love for the less socially acceptable parts of the animal (ox heart? Bring it on). Fancy schmancy decor? Pah. This lot are above that sort of foofy nonsense. A young, intense staff whose rangy, lean figures belie their passionate interest in food. Sourdough bread. A short, witty wine list and probably some ridiculously named beers or an openness to BYO.

So, to the list above, you can add The Ambassador, The Fox, Magdalen and Rochelle Canteen, to name just a handful.

And now Great Queen Street. The seriousness of intent is there, in the nuts-to-pretension name; in the deliberately anonymous frontage - formerly belonging to an undistinguished boozer called The RamPage. There's no sign: I guess the theory is that if you're interested in this kind of thing, you'll find it. It's a cross between endearing insouciance and over-confidence.

Walls are unadorned oxblood (like Magdalen); chairs are Spartan bentwood (The Ambassador); daily-changing menus are printed on a simple sheet of A4 (all right-thinking gastropubs); there's even the now-obligatory wiry, curly-mopped chap behind the bar (every gaff should have one).

So, are we bored with all this? Does it make us long for a flock-covered chandelier or two and some riotous wallpaper, just like you'll find in every style-obsessed joint in town? Not with food like this, it doesn't.

If you were invited to dinner at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's, I imagine it might look a little like this: maybe some slender spears of sprue asparagus to start, a Hereford beef rib for mains and some rhubarb fool for afters. It's deceptively simple, the sort of stuff that only works if you've started with decent ingredients.

And here, for the most part, it works very well. Ex-Eagle chef Norrington-Davies shows off his heritage with some gutsy flavours and a pleasingly slapdash approach to presentation and plating.