Such joys of the South

Talking to Nick Jones, owner of Soho House, Cafe Boheme, Electric Brasserie and more, I snapped out of a birthday party hangover induced reverie when he said: "I open restaurants because I love to see people having a good time." It seemed so revolutionary and also almost moronically nice within the hard-nosed business that is catering. I paid attention, too, when he said he had spent nine years with Trusthouse Forte learning the business.

Jones's first restaurant venture was an abysmal failure. I have to take his word on that because I never went to Over The Top, on Fulham Road, where a selection of apparently disgusting toppings were available for pouring on meat or fish.

The Soho branch is what turned into Cafe Boheme, nowadays crowded for nearly all its long hours (open late daily and 24 hours Thursday to Saturday). His decision to try to repeat in Balham the successful formula established at Electric Brasserie in Notting Hill Gate came about for the rather under-researched reasons that there were premises available and he had once lived in Wandsworth.

Last Friday evening, when I went to BALHAM KITCHEN & BAR, the joint was jumping. There was a time when almost any new restaurant used to get occupied as assuredly as a hole dug in sand fills with water, but those times have past.

The evident popularity of Balham Kitchen lies not just in its existence in an area where the main competition is The Polish White Eagle Club, but in a canny division of space for drinkers and eaters (more for the drinkers), its streamlined design, warm welcome, sunny disposition of enthusiastic staff and a menu that suits almost any mood or appetite.

Jones, father of a toddler, has also instituted a crèche, open from Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm, at £3 per hour, maximum of two hours. Taking advantage of that, you could even nip out to Ravenstone Street market across the road.

Four of us tested a part of every section of the menu. That means small plates, seafood, roast of the day, salads and sandwiches as well as the usual starters, main course and puddings. Finesse in the preparation of dishes varied wildly.

Those considered a hit were small plates of crispy squid, sautéed chorizo and aubergine biyaldi, a first course of crab Florentine, main course of black bream with green beans and sauce vierge, and the dessert of profiteroles with a wonderful tar-black chocolate sauce.

Opinions differed over the risotto with mushrooms and taleggio. My Australian GP, Dr Pete Ryan, a Balham resident, thought it soupy but admitted that he doesn't make risotto with Arborio or Carnaroli rice but ordinary long-grain, so my verdict stands: there was too much cheese.

Chicken breast, which was roast of the day in name if not in reality, arrived underdone but was taken away and fixed. Dressed crab based on a sweetly fresh creature, a fact discernible in the claw meat, was overdressed in the shell, too many brash accoutrements of flavouring elbowing their way into the mayonnaise.