Not quite cutting it

The man at the table behind us was like Jabba the Hutt. Slumped over his dinner, he occasionally uttered a guttural, slurping sort of commentary in a thick accent: nice, good chef, gooooood. I wasn't sure whether to be encouraged or alarmed.

In these early days of the Curzon, in Mayfair, the clientele is a little, well, weird. Maybe it's the proximity to Shepherd Market, but there seemed to be a lot of corpulent older men wafting about with diaphanously-clad young damsels. Another table looked like an out-take from The Sopranos, and the scary chap sporting voluminous shorts, Pancho Villa moustache and panama was a joy. Especially since my smattering of Italian revealed he was with his auntie.

From this you can probably infer that the Curzon has a pretty authentically Italian ambience. Not ersatz Italian in the ginghamand-Chianti way, rather Italian in an urban, could-be-in-Rome kind of way. It's got that smart, almost gloomy, look that can sometimes pass for sophistication.

The aim here, we're told, is 'to create the best and most authentic Italian restaurant in London'. Well, they totally ain't there yet.

Most strikingly un-Italian was a ludicrously fussy approach to presentation: if the food could be faffed about with, it was. Dishes were tarted up with crispy frills of deep-fried herbs, Parmesan tuiles, gew-gaws and what-nots. Everything was piled vertiginously into tottering tubes. The staff weren't so much waiters as a juggling act.

Perversely these follies were presented on overly ornate crockery, giving a cacophonous effect entirely unflattering to the food.

Not that it's bad, merely a bit ordinary, although the regularly changing menu, designed to reflect seasonal foods, does read like the real McCoy. You're likely to find choices such as the rustic zuppa di ceci (chickpea soup); pappardelle with a duck ragu and black olives; ravioli filled with spinach, gorgonzola and spring onions.

The 'leading Italian chef Beny Valini' comes from the Etrusca Group - La Spezia, Caravaggio, Artigiano etc - a bunch of mostly unremarkable, inoffensive numbers. So not much change for here, then.

There are nods to modernity, such as my raw marinated sea bass, an acceptable ceviche-like assembly, sharp with citrus and drizzled with olive oil. For no apparent reason, its accompanying avocado had been painstakingly sculpted into something resembling a bidet.

It really didn't need its frilly fried herbs or the solecism of its Parmesan wafer. Bresaola tasted a little dusty; inevitably, it came with shavings of Parmesan and the wretched rocket weed. A glug of good olive oil would have helped.