No pretence please

I had never been to Sketch, but I have been to Pierre Gagnaire's eponymous restaurant in Paris (he is the consultant chef at Sketch), where I had a truly memorable, incredible dinner. Pierre is one of most inspirational chefs of the past few years, and as a person he is very humble - a wonderful chap.

This review gave me a good excuse to try the upstairs restaurant, the Lecture Room & Library, which was awarded its first Michelin star this year. Gagnaire and Mourad Mazouz (hiscoowner at Sketch) had been to The Fat Duck, in Bray, about a month ago, and I'd met Pierre at the Restaurant Magazine Top 50 awards recently.

My wife and I left home in Buckinghamshire, truly excited by the prospect of a dinner in London. This soon turned to frustration, however, as we sat in traffic. A caravan had broken down on the M4 flyover and so we were more than an hour late.

We were greeted by the lovely Sinead Mallozzi, the general manager, and met head chef Pascal Sanchez, who I had met before at The Fat Duck.

I didn't find Sketch at all pretentious; Mourad's eye for creativity is amazing. The whole place was very busy, with a private party being held in the Parlour and a lively West Bar; it was like walking into a scene from Alice in Wonderland.

But on to the food. We ate many wonderful dishes - too many to describe them all in full here - but some that stood out were an amuse bouche of a ginger crumble served with a pea and mint jelly topped with a milky bacon mousse.

The crumble was at the bottom of a small glass, topped with the peas and mint, bound with a delicate jelly. This was topped with a frothy bacon foam. It was fantastic.

Another was a little tartare of mackerel delicately spiced with columbo spices (a form of curry powder that we use at The Fat Duck in our cauliflower purée) and a poached mussel. I then had the scallops, done in four ways, including a tartare scallop with finely diced Granny Smith apples and glass of grapefruit granité to cleanse the palate.

Mourad joined us for desserts, and despite being deep in conversation, there were two that literally stopped me in my tracks: the rice pudding with roast apricots, muscovado tuile topped with summer truffles and toffee.

The other was compôte of strawberries and tomatoes with bits of dried crunchy black olives in it. These two desserts were so good that they made me hungry again!