Grace and flavour: Novikov

I’m pleased I witnessed Novikov in Mayfair with my own eyes. It’s a gastronomical adventure I’d not have believed second-hand. Novikov is a cavernous, retchingly expensive, two- tier Italian/Asian dining venue owned by Arkady Novikov, ‘Russia’s most famous and successful restaurateur’.

He’s also ‘the man with the Midas touch’. I discovered these two plaudits on the website, accompanied by a photo of him clutching wine glasses to his face, looking cocky and panto-mysterious, like Siegfried and Roy before the tiger flipped out and bit Roy.

Novikov serves two vastly different cuisines in one building, with a small set of stairs dividing the two. Upstairs closely resembles a branch of the Ping Pong dim sum chain and downstairs looks like the world’s biggest Jamie’s Italian. Generally, I don’t hold with the concept of two cuisines in one building, unless I’m at a garish all-inclusive resort and have been drinking Rum Runners since breakfast, but I was prepared to make an exception for Arkady.

On Friday lunchtime, Novikov was full of mumbling businessmen huddled in powwows and gaggles of incredibly thin women having a jolly time but rarely lifting a fork, which was apt because Novikov is the perfect place to go if you’re not in the mood to eat. I spent £150 on an Italian lunch for two in 60 minutes, walk-ing away puzzled and starving but thrilled to have witnessed the show in motion.

Lunch was a cacophony of awful: stale bread, a plate of vivid pink spongy mortadella that appeared to have been sketched by Matt Groening, disappointing calamari served with a rough tartare sauce. If I ate here every day I could wear size 0 MaxMara, too. An earthenware dish full of mixed field mushrooms, swimming in oil, with assorted rough herbs in it, was topped with a runny fried egg and a small jug of gravy; there’s ‘rustic’ and then there’s ‘looks like a prop off Game of Thrones’.

Each of these antipasti was a real snip at around £18 a pop. Grilled scampi appeared in its shell looking fearsome, enlightening me as to why for decades chefs have breadcrumbed it and hidden it in baskets. A perfectly lovely piece of grilled Dover sole with wilted spinach saved the day – at £32 it was under pressure to perform. I dodged pudding and went off in search of lunch.

Novikov, 50A Berkeley Street, W1 (020 7399 4330)