Rhodes towers above

All the palaver needed to access Rhodes Twenty Four might put people off. Security is tight in the imposing surroundings of the former Natwest Tower: you have to win the trust of various burly chaps with a suspicious glint in their eyes before you can convince them that you haven't got an untoward device in your Lulu Guinness.

I enjoyed it - call me perverse - it made me look forward to Gary Rhodes's new baby even more keenly.

In the event, the restaurant (on the 24th floor, of course) is quite unassuming; bland, even. Perhaps the thinking is that the view - the Erotic Gherkin, full-on, at close quarters - needs little by way of embellishment. (If that's the case, they might have considered non-reflective glass: the room's internal lighting drowned out much of the impact.)

In London we don't go in for high-rise dining nearly enough. I'm very cross to hear word that the proposed restaurant in the Gherkin itself won't be accessible to regular Joes, only occupants and their guests. And where are our revolving restaurants? Rhodes's relocation is therefore really welcome.

'Will he be in the kitchen?' I ask. The publicist's response is suitably fudged: he'll be very much handson, supervising menus, sourcing the British produce for which he's become famous, but erm, no, not all the time. Still, the menu reads as a hymn to his passions: oh-so-now, tersely one-worded headings - such as pork, mackerel, haddock - hide solid, almost Gentlemen's Clubbish dishes given the Rhodes treatment. Which means they're mostly expertly realised, made from ace ingredients and delicious.

One dish has had me gibbering with naked lust ever since, giving recollection a rosy glow, even though we were dumped in the worst seat in the house, marooned in the middle of the room right beside a service station and tragically divorced from the view. (Ask for a booth or a table beside the vertigo-inducing, floor-length windows.)

Starters: my sausage of partridge - with its airy, spongy texture and earthy flavour, far more of a boudin - came with little turned parsnips, scented with sweet thyme and slightly under-roasted, and a crackingly sharp Bramley apple sauce. Rhodes's much-loved omelette lobster thermidor has been translated here as a glazed cheddar and lobster omelette: a little copper pan of addictively gloopy egg, laced with nutty, tangy cheese and packed with lumps of shellfish. Rich doesn't even begin to describe it, but it's gorgeous.

The date's bitter duck was the only disappointment: the skin, lacquered with black treacle, had been fiercely fired, but remained flabby rather than achieving the desired charred crispiness. The meat was toothresistingly rare. A date and parsnip purèe had been so resoundingly processed that it teetered on the edge of gelatinously unpleasant.

Don't care: I'd ordered the knee-trembling star of the show - a pudding of moist, squidgy but improbably light suet crust, densely packed with onions and slow-cooked mutton of truly noble flavour. It came with three little jugs of sauces: a silky, soothing onion soubise; a rather embrocation-y caper sauce; and a magnificently punchy mutton gravy.

Note to self: do not order a suet pudding - a heroically proportioned jam roly poly for two - after a suet pudding. This absurd greed left me in pain; almost worth it, though, for the heavenly home-made custard, which I spooned straight from the jug. Superior comfort food with a view - what's not to like?

Rhodes Twenty Four
24th floor, Tower-42, 25 Old Broad Street, EC2N 1HQ