Try grazing exquisitely

The last time I ate Andrew Turner's food, I was so bowled over that my prose became positively purple. His gig at the magnificently overwrought Bentley Kempinski Hotel in Kensington, West London, was the ideal showcase for his equally overwrought manner of cooking.

Unused to 'grazing' menus (Turner was an early pioneer of the lots-of-small-dishes ethos at Brown's Hotel), I was hypnotised. That I was also pissed as a gnat trapped in Baileys, thanks to the similarly new-to-me concept of glugging a matching wine for every one of what seemed like 40 courses, is neither here nor there. Anyway, I loved the place.

Here we are four years later and in the interim I've crammed in as many hoitytoity, three-star, molecular, haute cuisine, what-have-you dinners as my Spanx will accommodate. The grazing concept has become extremely commonplace. So, I'm gagging to see if Turner's new home at the increasingly glamorous Langham Hotel will be another wow.

The answer, as you'd expect - you've seen the stars at the top of the page - is yes and no. If anything, Turner's menus - tasting options of five to eight courses in addition to an à la carte - read even more elaborately than before. Here's gratin of seafood with macaroni, basil, grapes and Sétoise sauce (a kind of rouille) and fillet of Welsh lamb with confit of Merton Farm pudding, braised shoulder, Niçoise olives and lemon purée. I wonder, in a London dining climate where Michelin is gonging pared-down joints such as Wild Honey (and the magnificent Sportsman in Seasalter, Kent: hurrah!), if it isn't all a little bit last century.

Every dish on our six-course menu looks like the result of hours of work and in some cases it's worth it: a broth-light velouté of French rabbit surrounding a sultry tangle of slow-cooked onions with nuggets of chorizo-flavoured bacon and a little crumbed beignet of frog's leg; a deconstructed Tournedos Rossini (deeply flavoured ruby fillet with the paté replaced by first-class seared foie gras). I love the gamey Anjou pigeon breast with a subtle, silky chicken and veal boudin blanc with black truffle.

But I have provenance niggles. Why French rabbit? Why Anjou pigeon? For every Guernsey sea bass on the menu, there's a Challans duck. The mission statement says that ingredients 'wherever possible, are British in origin'. Is it impossible to get a decent British duck? Look, I'm not anal about sourcing, but if you don't mean it, don't say it. And it comes across, yet again, as slightly retrograde.

Some of it verges on the so-what. I struggle to remember my line-caught sea bass: oh, it is beautifully cooked, but its accompaniments - with the exception of cubes, which appear to be harsh balsamic jelly - are eminently forgettable. There's a pointless blob of vinous foam on top; all it's delivering is a passing nod to look-at-me food fashions, the culinary equivalent of Balenciaga's Meccano shoes.

The tartare of smoked salmon, with a topping of soured cream and a blob of moussey horseradish, a slick of sweet mustard sauce and a quail's egg topped with caviar, is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Still, I would happily go back to The Landau tomorrow - and the day after. Why? Because it's a properly posh room, the sort of jawdropper than makes every meal a sumptuous occasion. After initial snippiness about London's ubiquitous chichi restaurant designer David Collins, I am really starting to love his work.

There are touches of humour among the swank, too, that give the space a lightness and brio. Even coatcheck tags are by Bill Amberg. Staff follow through: after being wafted past the shimmering, atmospheric, vaulted corridor lined with twinkling wine bottles, we're asked: 'Would you like a side table or one with a nice view of the traffic jam?'