Turbot-charged bill

The waiter approaches us with a silver platter bearing a fish. He seems anxious. 'Here is your turbot.' Very nice, we say. 'It's 600g,' he continues. Seems fine to us. 'The smallest one we have,' he persists.

The penny finally drops. What this tactful chap is trying to hammer home is that the fish is sold by weight. And, at £11.50 for 100g, this little fellow is going to be costing us a hilarious £69. We boggle.

The waiter has anticipated our reaction. 'It's flown in fresh every day from Italy,' he pleads. On what? Alitalia business class?

We trade down to pasta, a relative steal at £20 a pop. With a bottle of rosè, the cheapest wine on the list - at £24.

So where are we? In rarefied Mayfair or Eurotrashy Knightsbridge? Nope, we are in an unlovely stretch of the Lillie Road, behind the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, with a nice view of a discount bed shop.

There is little about this new operation that makes sense. It has a terrace in front - all rattan furniture and cream cushions - 'glassed' in with sheets of plastic. Just the thing to keep summer rainstorms off the Fendi in Portofino but here it just looks perverse; after half an hour of simmering in it over a perfectly made Negroni, I felt as if I had been cooked sous vide.

The interior is almost threateningly penumbral apart from the anomalous Philippe Starck Ghost chairs.

When I arrive, staff are unpacking the day's flown-in-from-Italy fish delivery (the restaurant is only open evenings) to adorn a huge, iced display. Why? We have fine fish here; all this performance does is make eating here expensive beyond Sketch or even Umu proportions. I don't even want to think about the carbon emission implications.

This is the first offspring of a Roman success story and the food is undeniably, authentically good - chef Paolo Petruccelli has been imported from the mother restaurant.

A flurry of antipasti is a great way to gauge the merit of an Italian fish specialist and ours were the real thing: teeny cubes of melting, marinated tuna; long tentacles of octopus, slow-stewed in a mellow tomato and wine sauce; fox fish - a kind of shark - wrapped round beautifully tender langoustines; turbot (hello!) in lemon; more octopus with a delicate sauce of asparagus; and much more. This is a voluptuous way to start a meal and costs £35. We shared just the one.