The A to Z of cool

You'd have to be a pretty grumpy old man to take a dislike to The Zetter. This boutique hotel on the Clerkenwell Road, with an Italian restaurant on the ground floor, is the latest venture of Mark Sainsbury and Michael Benyan, the brains behind Moro in Exmouth Market.

Every detail of both the hotel and the restaurant, from the vending machines outside the rooms to the prosecco available by the glass, has been lovingly chosen and the result is a perfect blend of the modern and the traditional. It's been open for less than a year, but already it's been garlanded with awards. If I wasn't married and mortgaged up to the hilt, I think I might move in.

As you might expect from such a cool establishment, it's almost impossible to find. I wandered up and down the Clerkenwell Road for a good 15 minutes before I spotted it, a converted Victorian warehouse with an understated 'Z' over the entrance.

The first thing you notice about the restaurant, which is up a short flight of stairs, is the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking St John's Square. Presumably, this room was once the heart of the Zetters pools empire, the former occupants of the building before Zetters was gobbled up by Littlewoods in 2002. It's an imposingly large space, though the hotel's interior designers - an outfit called Precious

McBane - have cleverly hung enormous, black-and-white lampshades at strategic intervals to make it seem less cavernous.

The Zetter can already boast a long list of celebrity regulars, including Ruby Wax, Franz Ferdinand and the Pet Shop Boys, but the only vaguely important people I could identify were the editorial staff of Frieze, the art magazine.

Like most trendy Clerkenwell restaurants, it caters to a very different crowd at weekends than it does during the week. I'd chosen a Wednesday lunchtime to make my visit and the other customers were mainly lawyers and media people. But I'm sure if I went back on a Friday night, it would be a sea of Hoxton fins.

I was having lunch with Pamela Williams-Jones, who runs a charity called Orbis UK of which I'm a trustee, and even though she only wanted one course, I persuaded her to split a gorgonzola, pear and rocket pizza as a starter.

She followed up with spinach and ricotta tortellini, while I had a pork chop with braised cabbage and speck, and, at the end of the meal, neither of us had any complaints.

The menu is very similar to Moro's, which isn't surprising given that the head chef, Megan Jones, used to work there. I'm not a huge fan of this particular style of regional Italian cuisine - it's a little too self-consciously rustic for my tastes - but many people are.