Stick to the basics

Another day, another lovely, tree-lined, Georgian suburb. To Greenwich this time and the rather lovely Greenwich Park Bar & Grill.

For this most English of locations - nestling against the park's gates - local entrepreneurs Greenwich Inc have decided to go with an American menu. Of course.

Downstairs in the bustling bar, you can graze on rather fine hotdogs and burgers. Upstairs - a beautiful eau de nil room adorned with a jewelled flower mural and the most scintillating, ghostly-twig light fittings - is an
altogether more rarefied affair.

Food is ambitious and therefore, I noted with a sense of sinking inevitability, hit and miss. Jumbo coconut shrimps gave an air of having only recently been liberated from their supermarket plastic packs but were inoffensive.

Beef skirt steak had been drenched in achiote (a paprikaesque spice from the annato tree) to sparky, tender effect: it came with a shrimp 'spring roll' and a little salad of pancetta and baby gem lettuce. Nice.

Treacly pork belly was thick, rich and spookily unfatty; a complex lamb dish - chocolate, chilli, onion and goat's cheese tart, beans and more pancetta - was sadly far less than the sum of its parts. I wished I'd gone for the simpler grill options, complete with corncob and tinfoiled spuds. Next time.

A meal for two with wine, water and service costs about £90. Greenwich Park Bar & Grill, King William Walk SE10. Tel: 020 8853 7860. DLR: Cutty Sark

Greenwich Park Bar & Grill
1 King William Walk, SE10 9JY