Swimming not sinking in E1

This article was published in February 2002

London is remarkable. I know that this is a banal remark, but the city's continuing capacity to surprise is quite astounding. Take St Katharine's Dock. I vaguely knew of it, down by Tower Bridge, but nothing had prepared me for the mini-Monaco that I discovered.

I quickly lost count of how many millions of quidsworth of shiny pleasure craft were moored here. What with Chelsea Harbour and doubtless a few other Thames-side versions of Puerto Banus or Cannes that I do not know about, London must have a sizeable community of weekend skippers who spend their leeezure time in braided blazers, powering up and down the Thames in their gin palaces.

No doubt they spend their days sipping pi?a coladas and drinking in the beauty of the scantily clad bimbos sprawled around their decks - and yet I never get to hear about them.

The revelation of St Katharine's Dock alone is reason enough to recommend visiting a misleadingly named restaurant called The Aquarium. There is not a fishtank in sight. Instead, views are of the pleasure craft and a quite remarkable Starbucks that looks like a temple to the muses or the sort of folly a showy 18th-century landowner would have shoved in his garden. If you were to erect a Starbucks at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas it would look like this.

The Aquarium, however, is a barren, bland-looking space with a sort of tarpaulin ceiling and the kind of chairs upon which Christine Keeler posed naked. However, I have seen many more expensively decorated places look an awful lot worse.

Nor was it exactly bristling with customers: the most exciting person was a woman with a tattooed bicep. I would imagine that there is little passing trade of an evening. The Aquarium also seemed to be on a mission from above to proselytise the eating of fish. Don't get me wrong, I love fish. Give me a bit of turbot and I am the happiest man alive, but I don't particularly like being preached to. However, the obliging service and surprisingly fine food put me in a better mood.

A little amuse bouche, a light, almost fluffy, tube of salt cod mousse wrapped in a film of leek and topped with a little slab of truffle was delicious, albeit strongly flavoured. I am, however, always impressed when a kitchen manages to deliver these little explosions of flavour.

My friend, an unreconstructed carnivore, who appeared in flared jeans and an early-Eighties Dynasty-style coat with shoulders that would not have been out of keeping on an American football field, shoved her amuse bouche my way and I greedily consumed it. She was more heartened by her tranche of foie gras and I toyed with my gravad lax, which was supposed to have been served with smoked cod's roe - though I must have missed the latter. Maybe a little bit was scraped onto the toast that supported my lax and, if so, I feel that more could have been made of it. If you happen to like cod's roe they do a very good plate of the stuff at Simon Parker Bowles' Green's, but I digress.

By the time the main courses arrived I was getting quite into The Aquarium. I rather liked its mournful half-emptiness. The chunk of steamed Arctic char that arrived atop a seafood risotto cake was a triumph. Beautifully prepared, the skin folded back like the sheets in a smart hotel. It was light, tender and faintly salmon-like. The only thing I would have changed about it was the silly rectangular plate it was served on. I had less time for the accompanying citrus and truffle salad. Crisped bits of citrus struggled with a pungent overload of what I took to be an excess of truffle oil.

My friend surprised me by eschewing the daube of beef and instead rhapsodising about the roast cod with prawn and thyme mash.

We liked it so much we stayed for pudding, which saw the greatest witticism of the evening, when my friend asked if what was billed as 'today's cr?me br?l?e' was better than yesterday's.