Posh nosh is real McCoy

What exactly is a posh restaurant? As a child, I ate out so rarely that I thought all restaurants were posh, but as I've gotten older the category has shrunk and shrunk until today I find myself constantly arguing about whether such-and-such a place can truly be described as posh. The Ivy? Nah, mate. It's a celebrity restaurant. Posh 'n' Becks might go there, but it's not posh.

So it's quite nice, at the grand old age of 42, to finally come across a restaurant that's the real McCoy. Bellamy's, a French-style brasserie just off Berkeley Square, received the ultimate seal of approval a couple of weeks ago when the Queen herself dropped in to celebrate the 80th birthday of a friend.

This is particularly impressive, given that Bellamy's has only been open for about 16 months. To be considered posh, a restaurant usually has to have been around for at least 75 years, but not in this case. Everything about Bellamy's is so perfectly judged it may well be the most pukka restaurant in London.

How did it pull off this coup? For one thing, it's in the right location. No, I don't mean Mayfair - though that helps, obviously - I mean it's in the same space that used to be occupied by Caviar Kaspia.

This was a famous society hang-out that, in its day (1987 to 2004), was the most expensive restaurant in London. I have particularly fond memories of the place because in 1996 I met the then 16-year-old Sophie Dahl there before including her in the Vanity Fair Cool Britannia issue.

More importantly, the managing director is Gavin Rankin. After setting up Caviar Kaspia, Rankin became Mark Birley's general manager and, for his second go-round in this location, he's recruited Stéphane Pacoud, the former head chef at Annabel's, and Chris Steiger, the former manager. The upshot is that eating at Bellamy's is a little like dining at Annabel's, the difference being that you have to cross the street to reach the dancefloor.

The interior of the restaurant, as well as the menu, is what Rankin describes as Franglais. 'Sometimes a bit of Franglais works wonders,' he says. 'If you say pommes aux choix it sounds a lot better than steamed potatoes.'

He took his designer - Tim Flynn - on a whistle-stop tour of 15 Parisian brasseries to give him an idea of what he wanted and the result is what might be termed brasserie classique, complete with a tiled and wooden floor, a brass rail and a collection of beautiful, framed posters.

The same attention to detail is apparent on the menu, too, which offers such brasserie standards as scrambled eggs and Périgord truffles, salade Lyonnaise, and sliced entrecôte with pomme frites.

I asked our waiter what the Queen had eaten and the answer was smoked eel mousse with 25g of Sevruga caviar followed by roast quail. Unfortunately, roast quail wasn't on the menu, but the kitchen was happy to whisk me up the same starter.