Slick service but high prices

Another good place for a West End night out is TEATRO which has a new head chef, Jamie Younger, who recently joined their kitchens from Bibendum at Brompton Cross. Teatro has the distinction of being possibly the only London restaurant to have been built in a car park, and it is strange to look around the long and rather elegant room and think that it was once home to the unmarked cars of Customs and Excise VAT investigators.

Now the room is a tad more comfortable and the lighting a good deal more flattering as it is heavily reliant on the candles to be found on each table (if your tan is not quite as golden as you would wish, this is grand news. Everyone looks good when lit by a flickering candle).

Younger's menu is an interesting one and draws its inspiration from all over the world - so you are faced with a couple of Thai creations, some classical French staples, and various traditional Italian dishes. Surprisingly everything seems to work pretty well.

A pumpkin, mascarpone and sage risotto is richly flavoured and has an excellent texture. The Thai squid-and-pork salad with ginger and green mango is a triumph, seriously sharp, bags of fresh coriander, a spike of chilli and tender pork.

The only warning note is the price: it's hard to view this plateful as an £11.50 starter without feeling twinges in the wallet.

A vanilla Bavarois with red-berry compote is well done: a splendid texture, just melty and not at all rubbery, good sharp fruits. Younger knows his stuff - a "chorizo, tomato, artichoke and oregano tarte fine" is also good - an excellent, thin, crisp, flaky base and just enough topping to showcase the intense flavours.

Or there's a simple satisfying dish like sauteed calf 's liver with pea-and-ham cannelloni - pink liver, good jus and a good combination of flavours in the cannelloni. Even the "green curry of plaice with Thai aubergines" (which, on first reading, sounds like the least promising main course) turns out well.

Cynics will point out that on the one hand plaice has bags of chef appeal because it is cheap, but on the other it is a difficult fish to cook well because of a chronic tendency to mushiness.

Here this dish is a success - firm fish in a subtle and gentle green curry sauce with little pea aubergines that pop between the teeth and offer a good contrasting texture.

Service at Teatro is West End slick, and so are most of the customers. The wine list has some good middleweight bottles. There is a slight query over the prices which may be a tad high (double-figure starters and puds at £7 have to be very, very good to impress), but Teatro offers good food, and a pleasingly flattering ambience means that your tan will look absolutely fabulous.

Teatro
93-107 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1