New bars, same old designs

It's not the fault of the Bush that, among the many interesting readings of its name, the foremost is currently that of the President-maybe-elect of the United States, who possibly won the election on the day the restaurant opened last week. It's actually named after its neighbourhood, Shepherd's Bush, and you could hardly expect it to relocate to Kensington Gore just so it could identify with the marginally less frightful candidate. On the other hand, since it cannot be long before the area is renamed Notting Hill West, the name will become a historical curio within months.

A little way down Goldhawk Road, The Bush Bar and Grill is to Notting Hill what Hadrian's Wall was to the Roman Empire, a place beyond which there are hairy, kilted barbarians who may still be using wenge. In spite of this fact, the Bush promises to be a lovely place, cool but relaxed, stylish without being up its own thing-located-a-bit-behind-the-thing-it's-named-after (or rather isn't).

I'd like to stress how lovely the Bush is, as what follows might be construed as criticism. It's just that, as you gaze around Tchaik Chassay's interior, you can't help marvelling at the fact that contemporary London bar design has become a style as recognisable and codified as the architecture of Egyptian temples. Every new bar, restaurant or club draws on the same archae-ology of stylistic tics, which entered the canon at some point in the last 10 years, and the Bush is no exception.

Thus you have the white walls with a plane of colour (Conran restaurants passim, from 1992) and the kitchen-as-theatre, exposed to the view of diners (ditto). The main innovation here is that the kitchen's proscenium is very long and narrow, as if the theatre in question was of an obscure but ancient Korean form, where you only see the actors' throats.

You have the big piece of BritArt, an as yet uninstalled piece by Ruth Blees Luxemburg, the photographer-poetess of the city at night. Here, the lineage can be traced via The Pharmacy (1998) to Angela Bulloch's installation in Oliver Peyton's lost city of Coast (1995), though serious scholars may wish to note the somewhat clumsier attempts of the Westbourne (September 2000), to enlist the cool of Damien Hirst and others.

You have changing coloured lights (St Martins Lane, 1999), though I recall something similar while waiting for the films to start at the Hastings Classic cinema, rather longer ago. The bar is long (The Avenue, 1995) and its grey top in glass-reinforced concrete recalls the buildingmaterials archi-grunge of the Social (1998). One of the more innovative details is a row of living shrubs (or bushes), though here one might cite the precedent of the Starck/Schrager Hudson in New York (October 2000), which is big on green stuff.

The Bush has the exposed ex-industrial ceiling of Conran's Bluebird, but efforts are being made to avoid the famously rattling Conran acoustic. The idea is that people now eat out rather than give dinner parties, so restaurants should be more of a home-from-home, with carpets, curtains and upholstered seats. Once people tried to make their kitchens look like restaurants; now restaurants have to look domestic, sort of, the seminal influence being Home in Shoreditch, a late Nineties room full of purposefully undesigned comfy chairs. Which brings us to the banquette, the precedents for which are too numerous to mention, it being to contemporary bars what wheels are to the typical car.

A favourite Peytonian device, the banquette, is everywhere. And why not? It's comfortable, achieves the aesthetic effect of joining furniture and architecture, and allows all settings on the intimacy gauge from total entwinement to keep-your-distance-or-I'll-nuke-you.

As I say, this is all great, but you do sometimes wonder if there is another way, something different, something perhaps like Red Cube Bar and Grill, the trendy new place off Leicester Square where the Spice Girls launched their latest offering.

This is slathered in bright red wallpaper, with a pattern of squares that seeps alongside boxed-in ventilation ducts in the same way that Laura Ashley patterns do in rural Trusthouse Fortes. The style is Peyton-Trocadero fusion, contemporary but unsubtle, and very much itself. Off the dance floor are three low-slung retreats for private parties, which have to be booked in advance. They are full of cushions and couches, one of them being "bedouin" themed, one zebra-striped, one in leather. "Are we meant to have a shag in here, or what?" is what you would think if you were unusually slow on the uptake, but just in case you don't get it, there are bas-reliefs of tasteful nudes to underline the point.