Neat towers above London

Richard Neat retired from Pied ? Terre on Charlotte Street at an age so ripe you might have called him Rip Van Winkle. Yes, he was 29 years old. And yet, in his sunset years, he managed to find a new life at that most Harold Robbins of coastal resorts, Cannes. Now he's back in London, taking up most of the second floor of the Oxo Tower with an eponymous gourmet restaurant - a large, sumptuous, ultra-swank, snails-and-foie-gras palace - and brasserie.

While I yield to no man in my admiration of Joseph Wan, the top man at Harvey Nichols and its restaurants, there have been times when the food at its restaurant at the Oxo Tower appeared to incline towards complacency. After all, with a view like that, who cares if the risotto is not up to scratch? If so, then neat (written in fashionably lower-case lettering) could well give the place a kick up the backside.

My dining companion's first comment was not auspicious. 'They haven't finished building it,' she quipped as we exited the lift. I tried to explain that this was, in fact, a fashionable, contemporary interior, and then I realised that she was right. We were staring at an unfinished room - not, as it transpired, part of neat, but a nearby office.

One might argue that neat brasserie is somewhat 'unfinished'. It is executed in a minimalist, mix 'n' match style. Some walls are simply brick painted in an unattractive shade between battleship grey and sludge (probably to match the Thames), while others are covered in what looks like expensive orange plasterwork.

The view, however, is wonderful. Although low-rise, it is bang on the riverside and offers a splendid panorama including almost the complete gamut of London's architectural styles from St Paul's Cathedral to Centrepoint.

Unfortunately, the mood was slightly dreary. A scantily populated, big, barren restaurant is not always the happiest of places. But as it was a Monday night and the place had only opened three or four days before, this was understandable. Less explicable, or forgivable, was the music. The high-speed Moroccan-influenced yodelling that echoed around this space had me reaching for the Prozac. Together, the look and the soundtrack put me in mind of a chapel of rest designed by Philippe Starck.

Happily, this dirge-like quality is not evident in the food. The appellation 'brasserie' is slightly misleading. Food, which is listed on the menu in a somewhat casual way, arrives at the table elegantly plated and demonstrating a symmetry and carefulness of preparation that is laudably French.

As a starter, I rather fancied the crab zabaglioni with tapenade palmiers. It seemed such a far-out, clever idea; it was also off the menu. So from eccentric I went ultra-conservative, with a dish of marinated salmon with Melba toast and fromage blanc, while my friend was almost as unadventurous with an order of Caesar salad - albeit a Caesar salad with slivers of duck and sardine vinaigrette.

As it turned out, my conservative-sounding starter was arranged in a pagoda-type tower and, as such, perfectly suited my main course - the calamari tower with sauce gribiche and a lemon-dressed salad. The squid looked like something out of a Jules Verne novel - tentacles all over the place.

The food so far was perfectly good, but then, so it ought to have been: £17.95 for a bit of squid - even if it was a very tasty bit of squid - is not exactly what is colloquially known as a bargain.