The future is orange

Apparently, Gordon Ramsay refers to me as Mrs Thatcher. Well, just like Mrs Thatcher, I choose not to live in Dulwich. She bought a house there and then decided not to inhabit it. Had I bought one, I might have moved out on account of what has been done to Belair House.

This 18th-century mansion, possibly the work of Robert Adam, sits at the edge of the park. In the late 1990s the actor Gary Cody bought it, refurbished the interior and opened Belair House restaurant and bar, an ideal gathering point for the locality.

It had its ups, at the beginning, and then its downs. Now the Grade II-listed building is in the same ownership as the South Kensington restaurant L'Etranger, and has been renamed Beauberry House.

Design company Andy Martin Associates - you might have seen its work at Mash on Great Portland Street - was given the job of yet another refurbishment. What better to do with graceful, classical proportions than put fuchsia carpet on the elegant staircase, introduce a bright-orange resin floor and orange chairs into the dining room and paint the walls Arctic white?

During last week's visit we were asked whether we would like to sit outside, and although the warm day was turning chilly round the edges, we fled the Kia-Ora decor to huddle by a terrace heater. Like a burger on the grill, a heater either cooks one side of you at a time or fries your head. It is not wholly satisfactory - nor good for the environment.

The cooking style of French-Oriental fusion created by executive chef Jerome Tauvron is copied by Beauberry chef Kunal Beynath, with variable success. Like the interior design, it doesn't chime with the surroundings.

A little freebie canapé of salmon sashimi featured fatty farmed slices. Spicy octopus salad had the tentacles of what looked more like squid waving from a heap of the sort of leaves that supermarkets put in bags. I liked the healthy seaweed garnish of the two pieces of sea bass tempura, though.

Roast "Blonde d'Acquitaine" veal chop with lime leaf was a mismatch of ingredients. At a price of £21 you don't expect to have to order a vegetable side dish, as in spinach at £2.75.

Confit and roasted milk-fed pork was well prepared, served in three small dishes like a hors d'oeuvres tray, but the mango chutney wrapped in a ribbon of cucumber brought nothing to the party.

Our immediate neighbours - one couple out of a total of three - droning on about emotional intelligence didn't either, so we skipped desserts and skipped off, having paid, of course. Rather a lot.