Three times the dining fun

As for everyone else, you should head over to the back of beyond, otherwise known as Shoreditch, for a restaurant experience like few others.

A vestigial sense of honesty compels me to point out that the food is unlikely to impress the dedicated and fastidious gastronome: it is slightly fussy with a faint tendency to over-sauce or garnish. Typical of the sort of things you might find on the menu, written in ostentatious French with English translation beneath, are filo-pastry pocket with saut?ed oyster mushroom, asparagus and red peppers, or venison rump steak with chestnut-and-shallot confit with red wine and port sauce. I started with seared scallops and tiger prawns on a bed of vegetable julienne, a dish that was perfectly good - the scallops plump and sweet. I moved on to a main course of seabass with a light saffron sauce with 'spaghettis of courgette', which was adequate.

My companion, a woman who instead of thanking me for rescuing her from the living death of dinner with a dozen Eurotrash art dealers, complained that I was dragging her off to a gastropub, devoured half a dozen snails and toyed with filet de boeuf with sauce poivre vert. The food may not have been brilliant, but I have eaten much worse for considerably more money.

The restaurant design, however, is miraculous. I'm afraid that the English language is simply too poor a tool to convey the optical overload that is the inside of Les Trois Gar?ons. If you were worried that minimalism was not quite dead, then this is the stake through its heart. This place does not merely bury minimalism; it dances on its grave. I am sorry that it took so long, but it was worth the wait.

Walking between the flambeaux outside, past the stuffed tiger, and the acid-etched mirrors, and waiting to be seated with a stuffed monkey to the left and, to the right, a crocodile teased into a standing position to act as an umbrella stand, one surveys a wondrous environment. In a previous life it was a pub, as the marvellous bar that looks like a proscenium arch implies. However, all similarities with the London boozer of yesterday, today and tomorrow begin and end there.

Everything, from the primate to the porpoise, seems to have visited the taxidermist at some stage or another and then made it along to Les Trois Gar?ons. Among the other stuffed animals we saw were countless birds in a vast Victorian cabinet, numerous gazelle/oryx/antelope-type things, a ram, a bear, a shark, a swordfish, and a dolphin.

But the truly wonderful thing about Les Trois Gar?ons is not the compelling nature of the taxidermy, but the fact that in every corner the eye alights on something interesting, fascinating and engaging. Chains of cut glass dangle from the ceiling; coronets adorn the bar; cut-glass globes top the newel posts; pictures are old and interesting rather than merely contemporary and tasteful. The joy is that this place is entirely original. What is similarly encouraging is that the eponymous trois gar?ons are happy to be in their establishment, wandering around, checking people are happy.

They are not jaded, ageing, celebrity chefs who want to make a fast buck by rolling out a concept, putting their names to some franchised, in-hotel, eating opportunity or making token appearances between television shows. Nor do they give the impression that this is the plaything of rich dilettantes; there is a touching naivety about the way they hope that you had a nice time.

I felt so at home here that I wandered past the bar, up the stairs, and found myself in a private drawing-room finished in similarly exquisite, but differently judged, taste: vast, antique busts, a floor taken from an old German manor house, and a former Oriental-style lift compartment from the Savoy that has been turned into a lavatory.

One of the owners appeared at my shoulder to inform me that he was considering turning this floor into a private dining-club. I look forward to becoming member number one.

Les Trois Garcons
Club Row, London, E1 6JX