Top for your bottom

We had a great table at Chair. It looked out on to the rolling passegiata of Westbourne Grove, allowing us to enjoy the effect that the startling picture windows were having on the normally insouciant passers-by. People seemed hypnotised by this curious hybrid of upscale restaurant and designer furniture store.

I, too, was mesmerised, particularly by a nearby standard lamp of such elaborate, surreal beauty that I was instantly besotted.

As you might expect, we had great chairs: bright red Eames's Organic chairs to be precise, which moulded themselves to our rumps, cushioning us in comfort.

But we could have sat on an Ercol bench, a Tom Dixon Café Stone stool, or one of Eero Saarinen's famous Tulip chairs. Everything is for sale. Strangely, the mish-mash of styles and designs creates a surprisingly harmonious environment to eat in: the upstairs resto is the downstairs furniture department's finest ambassador.

Chair is the baby of Andrew Cussins, the man responsible for Sofa Workshop. After selling that successful, if not terribly glamorous, chain he came up with this little number, a concept that, with its glossiness and air of West London self-satisfaction, smacks a little of vanity project - albeit a successful one.

There's a bit of a British theme going on. The store features young and upcoming British design talent and the menu bristles with attributable produce: 'prime South Downs organic beef sirloin from Sheepdrove Farm'; 'queen scallops baked in their shells, Stonefield Castle, Loch Fyne'; that sort of thing.

The cooking is almost but not quite there. Some things - such as an ambitious-sounding guinea fowl terrine with home-made piccalilli - were far better than we expected, the meat tender and gamey and the pickle crispy, fresh and punchy with English mustard. The hollandaise that came with perfectly cooked West Sussex asparagus was foamy, buttery heaven.

Others you'd suppose to be idiotproof, such as home-cooked chips (as opposed to cooked where, exactly?), were downright poor: skin-on slabs fried in oil so hot the exterior ended up mahogany, the interior raw.

A platter heaving with seafood brought disappointments - chilly, slightly overcooked lobster, chewy little cockles, whelks and mussels and none of the billed scallops. Good langoustines, though. My lamb was a delectable chunk of chop, sweet, melt-in-the-mouth: it deserved a simpler preparation than its gussied-up, flabby herb 'crust' and overpowering slick of garlic and onion purée.

The arrival of our pudding - a strangely tart-like apple and rhubarb crumble - and cheese coincided with the arrival of the owner who, having
heard about my standard-lamp lust, came over to throw cold water over me with its price: £3,000, I-thank-yew-very-much. His enthusiasm for his new project was infectious: we were even allowed after-hours access to the shop downstairs (lovely; full of deliciously unaffordable goodies).