Some like it haute

Bear in mind that nobody knows who we are when we keel up for dinner. We're pretty used to getting the table by the lavs treatment, just like anyone else. But if our visit to Marcus Wareing's newly-relaunched Pètrus, now in the Berkeley Hotel, is anything to go by, everyone is in for the most pampering, cosseting, lovefest of a dinner.

We were treated like royalty - even a simple request for directions to the ladies' resulted in a personal consort right to the door.

Everything about the place whispers luxury, expense and the promise of pleasure: it's a silver-tongued sugar daddy of a restaurant. Shame, then, that the only people who can realistically afford it are the suits and helmet-headed power dowagers, who were our fellow guests (even the set dinner weighs in a hefty £55 per head).

David Collins's re-fit of the space that formerly housed La Tante Claire is clever and a better use of the room than before. You access it through a formal little bar and you're immediately enveloped by its womb-like, deep claret embrace. The colour scheme pays homage to the old Pètrus in St James's, but the sumptuousness has been upped a gear. Michelin lust? I reckon so.

It has, like any other operation at this level, a levity-deadening quality - the luxury sucks the life out of you. Serious food, I suppose, so serious surroundings.

And, yes, this is food to approach with the most po of faces. You get recondite ingredients, the complex techniques, the full complement of amuse-bouches - including a haunting foie gras, onion and brioche confection - and petit fours, served from a camp and inappropriately hilarious chandelier/trolley.

We ate good things and great things. Was the perfect omelette Arnold Bennett massively enhanced by collops of lobster or a moat of fish veloutè? Not sure. Every element was ace: trembly eggs, yielding lobster, a sensational depth of flavour in the fish stock, but this is a dish that stuns by simplicity (and difficulty of execution). Sautèed scallops were sweet, pearly chaps ranged round a Charlotte potato salad with leeks. There was also, apparently, carrot purèe, baby artichokes and truffle cream. Enough already?

This 'one ingredient too far' thing characterised main courses, too. Why add a sea urchin sauce to spicy monkfish tail, langoustines and calamari, when its fleeting flavour was consumed by the - admittedly gorgeous - liquorice-meets-fresh-fish smack of the main ingredients? Still, it reads well. The fish itself was mesmerisingly good. And we got smoked cod roe, aubergine caviar, sautèed baby gem lettuce and turkey jus with our Welsh rarebit-glazed turbot. This - pungent, tender, deeply savoury - was great.

I can live without puddings. But I'm still grooving on the memory of a peanut parfait with rice crisp crunch, Valrhona chocolate and candied peanuts. This was like The Almighty's reworking of a Snickers Bar.

Afterwards, we were invited to view the kitchen. This never happens! Consequently, as the brigade buzzed round us, we stood like lemons, incapable of a sensible question. Behind was the Chef's Table (dine in the heart of the action for a small king's ransom) where a well-fed bunch was waxing expansive. I found it all a bit Caligula - guzzling while the workers sweat - but each to their own.