Rock'n'roll burger and chips

Mark Fuller, a man with the sort of hairstyle favoured by the male members of Bucks Fizz, has done it again.

A little while ago, Fuller reopened Embassy, a good restaurant with a basement nightclub, on the site of the old Legends. Now he's done the same with the Marquee club, but in a shopping centre in Islington. I cannot pretend to be much of a rock 'n' roll historian, but you would have had to have been fairly blasted out of your skull to think that the Marquee was originally located in a North London shopping mall.

I am so preposterously out of touch with the live music scene that I had no idea what to expect. If I were to sum it up as a contemporary and unembarrassing version of the Hard Rock Caf?, attached to a well-equipped music venue, I hope I am not doing the place a disservice. It is not as sweaty and dirty as I might remember the old Marquee being; but then Tony Blair has decreed that we no longer live in dirty times and that it is only acceptable to sweat at political conferences.

The Marquee has apparently been 'designed' by Ilse Crawford and might be described as minimalist in the sense that there does not appear to be an awful lot of design. The concert hall is just a concrete-floored chamber overlooked by a VIP bar; the restaurant has nice leather banquettes, a big central bar and some pleasant old rock'n'roll photographs on the wall and that is about it. I understand that some rubber wallpaper is coming, with pockets into which one can put handbags to make life more difficult for thieves. The sole concession to rock 'n' roll mores is that the lavatories have seats but no lids.

I welcome these changes - may I also suggest opera glasses and Stannah stairlifts for elderly visitors to the VIP bar. One of the key improvements is the food, prepared under the aegis of Gary Hollihead, who also cooks at Embassy. Hollihead is a jolly survivor among London chefs - he earned his first Michelin star in the Eighties - and he now turns his attention to burgers, fish and chips, and banana splits; the sort of nosh that discerning rockers have been shoving down their necks since Bill Hayley and his Comets first rocked around the clock.

Although he stops short of deep-fried peanut butter sandwiches, the food is commendably unpretentious. Having eaten at Marquee, I know how Elvis got so fat. There is something about this American-inspired food that has one dropping European 'fain daining' etiquette and just tucking in. A chunk of hot, smoked salmon as a starter came with a fab piccalilli, which should really be bottled and sold under the Marquee label. Burgers came in about a dozen varieties, correctly garnished, between two halves of a yielding bun of a pleasing pillowy whiteness and served in weird bowls that reminded me of hollowed-out, egg-like chairs from the Seventies. Chips actually tasted of potato, which I found remarkable, although they might have done with 90 seconds more frying.

Where one might have expected someone like the undeniably talented Gordon Ramsay to start making burgers with foie gras and Roquefort, Hollihead just likes to make a good burger that looks and tastes rather better than one has any right to expect for five or six quid in a smartish London operation with waiter service.

Service does its best to help but is clouded by the suspicion that one is going to do a runner - my dinner companion, an influential figure in City circles who can make or break entire currencies with a single telephone call, was asked to produce her credit card when she ordered a drink.

Hopefully, they might relax a little. The new Marquee is a smart place, not ankle-deep in beer and cigarette butts, into which people are encouraged to bring their handbags.

Marquee
16 Parkfield Street, N1 0PS